THE 


REUGIOIOFTHEIEART 


THE 


RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 


RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

'^  ilTanual  of  JaitI)  a\\b  JDutp. 


Br" 
LEIGH  HUNT. 


rUBLISHED  AND  DISTRIBUTED  BY  A  DISCIPLE. 


NEW-YORK: 
PRINTED  BY  J.  J.  REED,  16  SPRUCE  STREET. 

1857. 


V 


^ 


\J 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Preface vii 

The  Religion  op  the  Heart.. 

Its  Creed  and  Hopes  ..*,»,.! 

Daily  Service, 

Aspiration  in  the  Morning 8 

Aspiration  at  Noon 9 

Aspiration  in  the  Evening .        .        :        i        .        .10 
Aspiration  at  B«dtime 11 

Weekly  Service. 

Silent  Reflections 12 

Liturgy 14 

Rules  of  Life  and  Manners        .        .        ,        .        ;  16 

Benediction  and  Aspiration 20 

Another 22 

Another 24 

Another,  during  a  Time  of  Trouble   .        .        i        .26 

Exercises  of  the  Heart  in  its  Duties  and  Aspirations. 

I.  Of  Duty  itself 29 

II.  Of  our  Duties  to  Others    .        ,        ,        .        .        .30 

III.  Of  the  Duties  commonly  called  Public      .        .        .34 

IV.  Of  our  Duties  to  Posterity 34 

V.  Of  our  Duties  towards  Children        .        .        .        .36 

VI.  Of  our  Duties  to  Ourselves  in  Relation  to  Our  De- 
scendants         .38 

VII.  On  the  Same  Subject 39 


442329 


Vi  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

VIII.  Of  Pain  and  Trouble 40 

IX.  On  the  Same  Subject 41 

X.  During  Affliction 41 

XI.  Addition  to  the  Foregoing,  in  Case  of  the  Loss 

of  Any  One  that  is  dear  to  us  .        .        .        .42 
XII.  In  Severe  Sickness     .        .        .        .        .        .45 

XIII.  In  Sickness  that  may  be  Mortal         .         .         .46 

XIV.  Of  Endeavor  in  the  Great  Work  of  Improvement.  60 
XV.  Of  Pain  as  the  Result  of  Vice  and  as  the  Occa- 
sional Necessity  of  Virtue        .        .        .        .51 

XVI.  Against  Excess  in  Pleasure        .        .        .        .52 

XVII,  Against  Pride  in  Virtue 53 

XVIII.  Of  Prayer  and  Thanksgiving      .         ,        .         .54 

XIX.  Of  Love  to  God  and  Man 57 

XX.  Of  Other- Worldliness 60 

XXI.  Of  Tears  and  Laughter 61 

XXIT.  Of  Conscience 62 

XXIII.  Of  War 72 

XXIV.  Of  Telescope  and  Microscope     .        .        .        .73 
XXV.  Of  Spirits  and  the  Invisible  World     .         .        .74 

XXVI.  Of  Religion 76 

XXVII.  Against  Superstition  and  Intolerance.        .        .  78 

XXVIII.  Household  Memorandum 81 

XXIX.  Of  the  Great  Benefactors  of  the  World       .        .  81 
XXX.  Of  the  Great  Means  and  Ends  of  Endeavor        .  85 

Punishments  and  Rewards  accordinq  to  the  Neglect 
OR  Performance  of  Duty. 

Punishments 87 

Rewards 100 


PREFACE. 


Nearly  thirty  years  ago  was  written,  and  ten 
years  afterwards  printed,  for  private  circulation, 
a  book  entitled  ^^Christianism;  or,  Belief  and 
Unbelief  Keconciled."  From  the  introduction 
to  that  book,  with  a  few  variations,  is  extracted 
the  greater  part  of  the  first  section  of  this  Pre- 
face. 

There  are  thousands  of  persons  in  England, 
as  well  as  in  other  countries,  who  appear  to  be 
of  no  religion ;  who  are  certainly  not  of  any  of 
the  established  opinions ;  and  who  join  in  no 
sort  of  worship,  public  or  private.  These  per- 
sons are  of  all  classes.  Formerly  they  were  con- 
fined to  the  more  educated ;  but  of  late  years 
they  have  spread  among  all  the  others.  It  is 
admitted,  at  the  same  time,  that  great  numbers 
of  persons  of  this  description  enjoy  the  most  re- 
spectable characters ;  are  just  in  their  dealings ; 
beloved  by  their  friends ;  and  fit  to  set  an  ex- 
ample to  society  in  every  respect  but  this  one. 

It  is  not  so  well  known,  certainly  not  so  often 


VUl  PKEFACE. 

admitted^  that,  however  deficient  these  persons 
may  be  with  respect  to  any  visible  religion,  there 
are  multitudes  of  them  who  have  a  strong  sense 
of  religion  at  heart;  who  make  enquiries  on 
the  subject  in  all  directions,  vainly  seeking 
spiritual  satisfaction ;  and  who  are  thus  driven 
to  wish  that  they  were  in  possession  of  some 
form  of  religion  of  their  own,  not  inconsistent 
■with  those  exalted  notions  which  they  enter- 
tain of  the  Divine  Spirit  of  the  universe,  and 
of  the  duties  of  beneficence.  A  great  reverence 
for  the  character  and  intentions  of  the  Founder 
of  Christianity  is  common  among  them,  though 
they  take  care  to  distinguish  their  opinions  of 
him  from  those  which  have  been  dictated  by 
theologians. 

By  a  form  of  religion  not  inconsistent  with 
these  sentiments,  is  meant  one  free  from  con- 
tradiction to  the  best  ideas  of  moral  goodness. 
In  the  service  of  the  church,  speaking  of  it  as  a 
whole,  including  the  scriptural  as  well  as  eccle- 
siastical portions,  nothing  is  to  be  desired  in 
point  of  eloquence.  It  is  often  afiecting,  often 
majestic,  always  nobly  and  simply  written.  The 
authors  of  it,  both  ancient  and  modern,  were  in 
earnest,  and  brought  to  their  tasks  a  great  por- 
tion of  natural  humanity,  as  well  as  certain  in- 
duced feelings  not  so  worthy  of  it  as  they  sup- 
posed, though  equally  calculated  to  make  an 


PREFACE.  IX 

impression  upon  existing  states  of  the  human 
mind.  But  not  to  mention  other  difficulties  in 
the  way  of  making  a  selection  from  this  service, 
those  very  feelings,  which  were  thought  so  es- 
sential a  part  of  devotion,  express,  and  mix  up 
with  better  things  so  many  rude  and  mistaken 
passions,  and  involve  contradictions,  both  divine 
and  human,  so  incompatible  with  the  present 
advanced  state  of  knowledge  and  love  of  good, 
that  they  are  found  to  be  no  less  barbarous  in 
the  eyes  of  simplicity  and  common  sense,  than 
in  those  of  a  philosophy  the  most  subtle.  The 
man  unsubdued  by  the  force  of  habit,  and  the 
child  before  he  is  made  to  take  words  for  ideas, 
are  equally  qualified  to  refute  some  of  their 
gravest  dogmas.  The  very  congregations  who 
repeat  them,  are  compelled,  from  time  to  time, 
by  the  progress  of  reason,  to  soften  the  mean- 
ing of  them  in  their  own  minds ;  till  at  length 
a  persuasion  comes  up,  that  profession  and  be- 
lief are  different  things,  and  that  it  is  necessary 
in  this  world  to  say  one  thing  and  mean  an- 
other ; — an  insincerity,  the  danger  of  which  is  evi- 
dent, and  which  has  been  extremely  pernicious. 
The  book  entitled  ''Christianism,"  was  in- 
tended, in  default  of  a  better,  to  supply  the  want 
which  so  many  of  this  portion  of  the  communi- 
ty have  felt.  A  sense  of  duty  may  be  kept 
alive  in  the  bosoms  of  individuals  without  any 


ostensible  religion  ;  and  very  certainly  it  is  so ; 
otherwise  there  would  not  be  such  numbers  of 
good  and  excellent  men  who  have  no  other  tie. 
But  one  generation  may  be  differently  situated 
in  this  respect  from  another.  Those  who  first 
speculate  for  themselves,  are  actuated  by  a 
vigor  of  mind,  and  checked  by  a  variety  of  cir- 
cumstances, which  tend  to  keep  the  moral  sense 
in  a  sufficient  state  of  ascendancy ;  and  if  such  is 
not  always  the  case,  excuses  may  perhaps  be 
found  for  them,  not  only  common  to  humanity, 
but  connected  with  the  opinions  from  which 
conscience  has  induced  them  to  depart.  But 
not  to  mention  the  claims  of  sentiment  and 
imagination,  it  may  be  dangerous  to  a  succeed- 
ing generation  to  be  in  want  of  something  di- 
rectly calculated  to  put  the  young  and  the  un- 
thinking in  mind  of  their  duties.  It  may  throw, 
and  in  fact  does  throw^,  unexpected  and  avowed 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  the  best  parents  and 
teachers ;  deprives  them  of  the  pleasure  and  the 
advantages  of  family  consciousness  and  co-ope- 
ration ;  makes  them  lament  that  they  have  no 
day  set  apart,  nor  even  a  few  moments  on  other 
days,  for  the  purpose  of  ridding  themselves  of 
worldly  distractions ;  of  refreshing  their  sense 
of  right  in  relation  to  the  world  itself ;  of  open- 
ing to  them,  under  a  light  equally  devout  and 
cheerful,    the   sacred   volume  of  Creation,   its 


wonders  and  its  beauties  ;  and  dismissing  them 
to  their  very  rest  and  recreation  with  the  only 
thoroughly  delightful  warrant : — in  short,  gives 
to  no  injunction  the  stamp  and  authority  of 
Divineness. 

All  systems  of  religion  however,  to  be  avail- 
able for  congregational,  or  even  for  individual 
purposes,  are  in  need  of  formulas  ;  the  formulas 
are  not  complete,  unless  they  include  both  in- 
junction and  assent ;  and  as  the  book  in  ques- 
tion was  defective  in  those  particulars,  consisting 
chiefly  of  meditations,  and  putting  its  conclu- 
sions into  no  practical  shape," — in  other  words, 
into  no  ritual, — it  was  found,  by  those  who 
otherwise  approved  it,  insufficient  to  work  out 
its  most  specific  object. 

This  defect  the  anxious  consideration  of  many 
years  has  supplied.  The  ritual  is  short,  but 
one  portion  of  it  is  of  daily  obligation  ;  and  the 
other,  or  Sunday  portion,  is  extendible  at  plea- 
sure, in  point  of  time,  by  the  length  that  may 
be  given  to  the  Discourse.  Additions  have  also 
been  made  to  the  rest  of  the  book,  rendering  it 
four  times  the  size  it  was  ;  and  a  new  title  has 
been  given  it,  not  from  diminution  of  reverence 
for  the  great  name  connected  with  the  former 
one  (far  be  any  such  suspicion)  ;  but  because 
the  worship  of  great  names  is  too  apt  to  be  sub- 
stituted for  the  observance  of  the  duties  which 


XU  PREFACE. 

they  illustrated  ;  and  because  a  due  amount  of 
association  with  the  reverence  was  to  be  incul- 
cated towards  every  great  and  loving  teacher 
whom  the  world  has  beheld,  and  for  the  God- 
given  scripture  in  his  heart. 

It  is  not  assumed,  that  the  ritual  will  be 
adopted  by  other  portions,  or  by  any  other 
single  portion,  of  th^  new  church  which  is  mak- 
ing its  appearance  in  various  quarters,  and 
which  (without  meaning  to  say  it  offensively  to 
any  church)  is  destined,  I  believe,  to  supersede 
all  others,  by  reason  of  the  growth  and  survival 
of  whatsoever  is  alone  good  in  eveiy  one  of 
them.  It  merely  (as  far  as  I  am  aware  of  any- 
thing to  the  contrary)  sets  the  example  of  em- 
bodying some  advanced  conclusions,  for  congre- 
gational purposes,  on  the  subjects  of  faith  and 
practice  ;  and  though  its  friends  would  gladly 
find  the  seed  which  it  has  sown,  promise  to  be  - 
come,  not  a  single  tree,  but  many,  yet  as  there 
are  trees  in  the  vegetable  world  of  many  kinds, 
so  this  church  of  the  future,  for  the  comfort  and 
free  breathing  of  the  natural  diversities  of  human 
judgment,  may  well  contemplate  in  its  offsets  a 
like  wholesome  variety.  Some  persons  may  de- 
sire a  service  of  a  kind  less  perceptive  ;  others, 
more  so  ;  othei*s,  of  greater  or  less  magnitude  ; 
more  or  less  accompanied  with  music,  &c.  The 
consummation  to  be  desired  by  mankind  is,  not 


PEEFACE.  Xm 

that  all  should  think  alike  in  particulars^  hut 
that  all  should  feel  alike  in  essentials,  and  that 
there  should  be  no  belief  or  practice  irreconcil- 
able with  the  heart. 

As  to  those  who  insist  that  the  heart  itself, 
the  tenderest  and  most  teachable  of  God's  earthly 
works,  is  a  thing  essentially  wicked  and  deceit- 
ful, I  would  beg  them  not  so  to  calumniate  their 
own  hearts,  much  less  those  of  their  neighbors. 
Most  persons  are  acquainted  with  individuals  so 
good-liearted,  that  if  the  whole  world  were  com- 
posed of  such,  we  feel  it  would  be  a  Paradise  ; 
and  what  is  to  hinder  the  progress  of  love  and 
reason  from  rendering  the  many  as  good-hearted 
as  the  few  ?  or  what,  meanwhile,  can  so  remove 
obstacles  in  the  way  of  the  progress  as  taking 
for  our  guides  the  hearts  ihat  have  proved  their 
goodness  and  their  truth  by  every  trial  that 
could  put  worth  to  the  test  ?  If  wisdom  such 
as  theirs  cannot  enlighten  our  path,  what  can  ? 
and  w^hat  have  their  calumniators  to  show  for 
their  better  knowledge  of  the  road,  whose  hearts, 
if  we  are  to  believe  their  own  accoimt  of  them, 
are  not  to  be  trusted  ? 

As  little  answer  need  be  given  to  those  who 
assert,  (and  very  believing  as  well  as  unbeliev- 
ing persons  have  asserted)  that  no  reasonable 
Religion  can  prosper,  because  of  its  reason. — 
Every  creed,  they  tell  us,  must  contain  some- 


thing  to  daunt  and  defy  reason  ;  otherwise  no- 
body will  attend  to  it.  It  will  not  strike  the 
senses  of  the  world  sharply  enough  ;  will  not 
force  them  to  quiver,  and  be  awe-stricken,  and 
give  up  their  own  judgment  to  ^'  God's  ;"  for 
the  assumption  is,  that  God's  judgment,  being 
superior  to  man's,  must  so  differ  from  it  in  kind 
as  well  as  degree,  that  it  must  needs  contain 
something  finally  discordant,  and  everlastingly 
to  be  deplored.  Without  threats  to  terrify  us, 
and  impossibilities  to  bend  reason  to  faith,  God, 
they  say,  would  never  be  thought  of,  nor  man 
kept  in  order.  The  Divine  Teacher  must  suc- 
ceed differently  from  all  others,  and  make  his 
children  love  him  by  dint  of  fear  and  terror ;  by 
setting  pits  of  torment  beside  lessons  incapable 
of  comj)rehension.  Such  are  the  comj)liments 
which  superstition  pays  the  Creator  ! 

If  argument,  or  fact,  were  of  any  use  in 
answering  logicians  like  these,  they  might  be 
referred  for  their  refutation  to  the  religion 
founded  upwards  of  two  thousand  years  ago  in 
China  by  Confucius,  which  was  set  up  wholly 
on  a  ground  of  reason,  and  yet  has  outlasted 
many  a  superstition,  frightfulness  notwithstand- 
ing. I  do  not  mean  it  to  be  inferred,  that  the 
religion  founded  by  the  great  Eastern  sage  was 
the  most  reasonable  which  time  could  discover. 
Noble  and  wonderful  as  it  was,  and  is,  consider- 


ing  the  superstitions  around  it,  it  partook  of 
the  mistakes  of  his  age  and  country.  Nobler 
systems  arose,  how  perverted  and  rendered  ig- 
noble by  the  very  prosperity  that  seemed  to  at- 
tend them,  need  not  be  here  explained  ;  since 
the  object  of  this  book  is  to  supply  the  wants 
of  one  class  of  religious  persons,  and  not  to 
give  more  offence  than  can  be  helped  to  others. 
I  mention  this  charge  however  against  reason- 
able religions,  partly  in  order  to  notice  that  re- 
markable disproof  of  it,  and  partly  that  no  in- 
ducement may  be  wanting  to  its  like  refutation 
in  this  quarter  of  the  world  ;  which  after  having 
so  excelled  the  Chinese  in  almost  all  those  other 
advancements  in  civilization,  of  which  they  set 
the  example,  should  hardly  think  with  compla- 
cency of  the  right  which  their  men  of  letters  re- 
tain to  wonder  at  some  of  the  lore  of  its  mission- 
aries. For  it  is  another  charge  against  reason- 
able religions,  that  the  professors  of  them  are  as 
cold  as  their  doctrine  ;  not  anxious  to  make 
proselytes  ;  nor  even  willing  to  encourage  co- 
operation. It  must  be  allowed,  that  reasonable- 
ness of  any  kind  is  not  disposed  to  take  the 
same  hasty  and  passionate  steps  for  making  its 
way  as  unreasonableness  :  the  heart  itself,  the 
more  it  warms  towards  its  fellow-creatures,  feels 
itself  more  and  more  alien  from  the  fervors  of 
fire  and  sword  ;  and  I  must  confess,  as  one  of 


XVI  PREFACE. 

those  who  desire  the  triumj)h  of  its  religion, 
that  glad  as  I  should  be  of  seeing  as  many- 
voluntary  converts  to  it  as  it  could  attract,  I 
have  never  thought  of  making  proselytes  in  any 
other  way  ;  nor  do  I  now  aim  at  making  them 
in  this.  I  address  myself  solely  to  the  predis- 
posed and  their  families.  Yet  I  should  laugh 
at  any  one  who  told  me,  that  this  was  owing  to 
coldness  or  want  of  zeal.  Want  of  zeal  will  be 
as  little  charged  uj)on  me,  as  abundance  of 
worldly  wisdom,  by  those  who  will  nevertheless 
consider  the  religion  in  this  book  as  very  reason- 
able indeed  ;  far  too  reasonable. 

Circumstances  occur  however  in  transitional 
states  of  opinion,  during  which  those  who  are 
most  in  the  habit  of  associating  the  idea  of 
permanent  results  with  endeavors  the  least  im- 
patient, feel  it  to  be  the  duty  of  a  zeal  the  most 
considerate  to  run  the  risk  of  being  thought 
wanting  in  consideration,  and  make  a  special 
movement  in  advance.  The  greater  the  number 
therefore  of  reasonable  religionists  who  join  it, 
the  more  they  will  vindicate  the  zeal  both  of  it 
and  of  themselves,  in  concern  for  whose  perplex- 
ity it  is  made.  I  do  not,  of  course,  assume 
that  they  are  to  remain  with  it,  or  to  make  no 
better  movement  of  their  own.  Let  them  make 
such  a  movement  by  all  means,  and  it  shall  be 
joined  by  myself.     I  should  ill  pretend  quali- 


PREFACE.  XVU 

fications  for  leading,  if  I  did  not  know  how  to 
follow.  Indeed  my  qualifications  in  the  one  re- 
spect (if  I  possess  them)  are  mainly  founded 
upon  those  in  the  other. 

And  may  Grod  bless  the  religion  itself,  ad- 
vance by  whose  guidances  it  may. 


RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 


ITS  CREED  AND  HOPES. 

God, — ^wMcli  is  the  name  for  the  great  First 
Cause  of  the  Universe,  for  the  power  which  has 
set  it  in  motion,  which  adorns  it  with  beauty, 
and  which,  in  this  our  portion  of  it,  and  through 
the  mystery  of  time  and  trouble,  incites  us  to  " 
attain  to  the  welfare  and  the  joy  which  are  there- 
fore to  be  considered  the  purpose  of  all  final  ex- 
istence, here  or  hereafter, — God  has  written  his 
religion  in  the  heart,  for  growing  wisdom  to  read 
perfectly,  and  time  to  make  triumphant. 

Without  this  First  Divine  Writing,  and  this 
power  to  outgrow  barbarous  misconceptions  of 
it,  no  writing,  claiming  to  be  divine,  could  be 
estimated,  or  understood.  The  human  being 
would  have  no  language  to  correspond  with  its 


"i  THE   flELIGION   OF   THE   HEAKT. 

].'ieitnlng^  no  fJacnlties  to  recognize  whatever  di- 
vineness  it  contained,  or  to  reject  what  was  mix- 
ed with  it  of  unworthy.  Decline  its  arbitration, 
when  ascertained  by  the  onlj  final  evidence  of 
its  correctness, — that  of  a  thorough  harmony 
with  itself, — and  there  is  no  folly,  cruelty,  or 
impiety  of  belief,  which  the  mind,  however  un- 
willingly, and  to  its  ultimate  confusion,  shall 
not  be  led  to  take  for  religion.  Admit  the  ar- 
bitration so  ascertained,  and  such  mistakes  be- 
come impossible.  Doctrines  revolting  to  the 
heart  are  not  made  to  endure,  however  mixed 
up  they  may  be  with  lessons  the  most  divine. 
They  contain  the  seeds  of  their  dissolution. — 
They  cannot  even  be  thoroughly  well  taught. 
Something  inconsistent,  something  quarrelsome, 
something  dissatisfied  with  itself,  or  uncharita- 
ble to  others,  something  uneasy,  unlovely,  or 
unpersuasive,  will  sooner  or  later  disclose  the  in- 
congruity, and  leave  the  gentle  and  coherent 
wisdom  to  be  found  the  only  guide. 

"With  a  like  necessity  for  relief  from  the  other- 
wise imperfect  conclusions  of  the  understanding, 
mankind  have  been  so  constituted,  that  for  the 
most  part  they  cannot,  without  uneasiness,  dis- 
associate the  ideas  of  order  and  design,  of  means 
taken  and  ends  contemplated,  of  progressive  hu- 
manity and  a  divine  intention.  They  are  con- 
scious of  a  difference  between  mind  and  body, 


THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  6 

between  the  invisible  will  that  moves  and  the 
visible  substance  that  is  moved  ;  also  between 
the  greatness  of  their  intellectual  aspirations 
and  the  smallness  of  their  knowledge  ;  and  most 
of  all,  between  their  ca23acity  for  happiness  and 
the  amount  of  it  which  they  realize  :  and  for 
all  these  reasons  they  desire  a  Giver  and  Com- 
forter, whom  they  can  thank  in  joy,  and  turn  for 
support  to  in  affliction,  and  feel  to  be  the  only 
fulfiller  and  security  of  that  triumph  over  the 
visible  and  the  mortal,  which  their  nature  has 
been  made  to  desire. 

Is  it  asked,  why  God,  the  Great  Beneficence 
(by  which  noblest  of  his  names  it  is  comfortable 
to  call  him,  since  it  has  never  been  abused,) — 
Is  it  asked,  why  the  Great  Cause  of  all  this 
beauty,  and  good  impulse,  and  hope,  has  left 
any  proof  of  his  being  undivulged  ?  any  one 
evidence  of  his  existence  unwritten  upon  the 
firmament,  in  characters  as  legible  as  those  of  a 
native  tongue  ?  Not  being  able  to  tell,  our 
hearts  bid  us  use  the  choice  which  he  has  given 
us,  and  believe  his  reasons  for  the  silence  to  be 
good,  and  the  happiness  which  it  contemplates 
greater  than  we  could  otherwise  have  attained. 
Perhaps  the  bliss  of  completely  knowing  him, 
could  we  have  drawn  it  prematurely  on  us,  might 
have  put  an  end  to  us  with  its  excess. 

Impressed  meantime,  more  and  more^  with  a 


4  THE    RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART. 

sense  of  this  Great  Beneficence,  in  proportion 
as  we  become  intimate  with  his  works,  the  hold- 
ers of  the  Keligion  of  the  Heart  beKeve,  that 
part  of  his  divine  occupation  is  to  work  ends 
befitting  his  goodness,  out  of  difi'erent  forms  of 
matter,  and  out  of  transient,  qualified,  and  un- 
malignant  evils ; — probably  to  the  endless  mul- 
tiplication of  heavens. 

They  believe,  that  in  the  world  which  they 
inhabit,  its  human  beings  are  among  the  instru- 
ments with  which  the  Great  Beneficence  visibly 
operates,  to  purposes  of  this  nature  ;  that  is  to 
say,  with  manifest  change  and  advancement : 
and  they  are  of  opinion,  that  wherever  a  so-called 
divinely-inspired  man  has  appeared,  the  inspira- 
tion has  been  justly  attributed  to  his  unusual 
participation  of  the  beneficent  impulse,  in  pro- 
portion as  the  lessons  which  he  has  taught  have 
been  effective,  reasonable  and  lasting. 

They  are  of  opinion,  that  enough  of  these 
lessons  have  been  given  mankind  to  furnish 
them  with  right  principles  of  conduct,  mental 
and  bodily ;  but  that  the  particulars  of  con- 
duct into  which  those  principles  should  be 
carried  out,  are  too  commonly  lost  sight  of 
in  the  supposed  sufficiency  of  general  precepts, 
perfect  in  spirit,  but  incessantly  violated  for 
want  of  reduction  to  such  particulars.  It  is 
therefore  their  opinion,  that  this  want  ought  to 


THE   RELIGION   OF    THE   HEART.  5 

be  zealously  and  constantly  supplied;  that 
health  of  mind  and  health  of  body  are  to  be , 
'professedly  cultivated  in  unison,  as  the  only  sure 
means  of  completing  the  rational  and  cheerful 
creature,  which  the  human  organization,  in  em- 
powering him,  requires  him  to  become ;  that 
some  of  what  are  called  minor  morals,  or  those 
affecting  temper  and  manners,  deserve,  on  that 
account,  to  be  known  for  what  they  are, — the 
particulars  of  great  ones, — the  everyday  mo- 
ments of  which  life  is  made,  household  moments 
especially,  being  deeply  concerned  in  the  recog- 
nition ;  that  any  further  insistment  on  the  ne- 
cessity of  such  points  of  faith  as  have  divided 
and  scandalized  the  world,  and  maintained  the 
worst  notions  of  the  divinest  things,  is  not  only 
worse  than  useless  to  man,  but  impious  (how- 
ever unwillingly  so)  towards  God ;  and  that  the 
great  business  of  Faith  is  to  believe  in  the  good- 
ness of  the  Creator  and  all  his  works  ;  of  Hope, 
to  look  for  the  thorough  manifestation  of  it  in 
time  or  eternity  ;  and  of  Charity,  to  do  and 
think  everything  meanwhile  in  the  spirit  of 
kindness. 

For  they  believe  that  the  Divine  Being  is  a 
wholly  good  and  beneficent  being ;  wholly  and 
truly  the  Great  Beneficence  ;  not  be  thought  of 
in  any  other  light ;  free  and  distinct,  in  essence, 
and  to  all  final  purpose,  from  admixture  of  the 


b  THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART. 

least  evil  through  which  he  works,  as  the  light 
itself  is  from  the  substance  which  it  penetrates. 
And  though  they  hold  it  to  be  as  impossible  for 
his  human  creatures  entirely  to  comprehend 
him,  as  it  is  for  their  arms  to  embrace  infinitude, 
yet,  inasmuch  as  they  are  his  work,  and  gifted 
by  him  with  affections,  they  may  feel  conscious 
of  him  with  their  hearts  on  the  side  at  which 
his  infinitude  touches  humanity,  and  without 
presuming  to  conceive  any  portion  of  him  in 
human  likeness,  consider  the  Author  of  their 
Being  as  including  a  Divine  Paternity. 

Nor  do  the  holders  of  these  opinions  the  less 
hoj)e  for  a  heaven  elsewhere,  or  for  an  endless 
succession  of  heavens,  or  for  an  equal  measure 
of  happiness  for  all  who  have  lived  and  suffered 
in  past  times,  let  earth  be  rendered  never  so 
heavenly.  For  what  marval,  deeply  considered, 
is  more  liiarvellous  than  another.?  And  who 
shall  limit  the  possibilities  of  adjustment,  during 
the  endlessness  of  space  and  time,  in  the  hands 
of  the  maker  of  the  stars  ? 

On  all  these  accounts,  it  is  their  persuasion, 
that  every  human  being,  for  his  own  sake,  and 
for  his  fellow-creatures'  sake,  and  (not  to  speak 
it  presumptuously)  for  God's,  is  bound  to  main- 
tain all  his  faculties,  mental  and  bodily,  in  their 
healthiest,  hopefuUest,  most  active,  and  most 
affectionate  condition ;   mankind,  in  proportion 


THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  7 

as  they  do  so,  being  advanced,  and  the  Great 
Beneficence  becoming  known. 

And  on  the  strength  of  all  this  hope  and  be- 
lief, they  bear,  they  endeavor,  and,  as  far  as 
duty  sanctions,  they  enjoy. 


DAILY  SERVICE. 


ASPIRATION   IN   THE   MORNING. 

When  the  hour  has  arrived  in  the  morning,  at  which  the 
reader  thinks  it  right  for  him  (or  her)  to  get  up,  he  will  re- 
peat mentally  and  with  his  greatest  attention  (or  loud,  if  a 
companion  is  agreed  with  him  in  so  doing)  the  following 
words.  In  the  latter  ease,  the  personal  pronoun  singular 
will  be  changed  for  the  plural. 

1.  In  the  name  of  the  Great  Beneficence,  to 
whom  be  all  reverence,  with  a  filial  trust. 

2.  My  first  duty  this  day  is  to  delay,  or  slur 
over,  nothing  which  I  am  bound  in  conscience 
to  perform. 

3.  The  hour  has  come,  at  which  it  is  there- 
lore  time  for  me  to  rise. 

4.  Thou,  0  my  heart,  biddest  me  rise,  for  the 
sake  of  others  as  well  as  myself 

5.  Because  on  thee  the  Divine  Spirit  has 
written  the  laws,  which  love  teaches  knowledge 
to  read  : 

5.  And  because  they  tell  me,  that  duty  must 
be  done,  and  that  affection  must  be  earned  by 
good  offices. 

7.  May  I  discharge,  throughout  the  day,  every 
other  such  duty  as  conscience  enjoins  me  : 

8.  Beginning  the  day  with  a  kind  voice  to 
others  ; 

9.  And  ending  it  with  no  reproach  to  myself. 


THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART. 


ASPIRATION  AT  NOON. 

(To  be  repeated  as  the  foregoing,  and  as  near  to  the  hour 
of  noon  as  possible.) 

1.  Blessed  be  Grod :  blessed  be  his  Beneficence, 
working  towards  its  purposes  in  the  noon. 

2.  It  is  good  for  me,  whether  unoccupied  or 
busy-j  to  withdraw  my  thoughts  awhile  into  a 
sense  of  my  duties  towards  God  and  man  ;  to- 
wards the  appreciation  of  the  Good  and  Beau- 
tiful in  his  universe,  and  the  diffusion  of  their 
blessings  among  his  creatures. 

3.  The  sun,  glorious  when  the  sky  is  clear, 
glorious  also,  for  it  gives  light,  when  the  sky  is 
clouded,  is  the  mightiest,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  most  beneficent,  of  all  his  visible  creatures 
in  this  our  sphere : 

4.  And  yet  it  is  but  one  of  an  innumerable 
starry  brotherhood : 

5.  What  a  proclamation  of  the  nature  of 
Himself ! 

6.  May  exalting  and  humanizing  thoughts 
forever  accompany  me,  making  me  confident 
without  pride,  and  modest  without  servility. 

7.  Perhaps  my  dearest  friend  is  now  thinking 
of  me  : 

8.  Perhaps  more  than  one  of  my  dear  friends 
and  kindred. 


10      THE  KELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

9.  May  I  ever  be  such,  as  generous  affection 
would  have  me  : 

10.  And  may   strength  and    happiness   be 
theirs. 


ASPIRATION  IN  THE  EVENING. 

(To  be  repeated  at  Dusk.) 

1.  Blessed  be  God ;  blessed  be  his  Beneficence, 
working  towards  its  purposes  in  the  evening. 

2.  The  portion  of  the  globe  on  which  I  live  is 
rolling  into  darkness  from  the  face  of  the  sun. 

3.  Softly  and  silently  it  goes,  with  whatever 
swiftness. 

4.  Soft  and  silent  are  the  habitual  movements 
of  nature  : 

5.  Loudly  and  violently  as  its  beneficence  may 
work,  within  small  limits  and  in  rare  instances. 

6.  Let  me  imitate  the  serene  habit ; 

7.  And  not  take  on  my  limited  foresight  the 
privilege  of  the  stormy  exception. 

8.  May  I  contribute  what  I  can,  this  evening, 
to  the  peace  and  happiness  of  the  house  in  which 
I  live  ; 

9.  Or  of  the  fellow-creatures,  anywhere,  among 
whom  I  may  find  myself. 


THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  11 

ASPIRATION  AT  BEDTIME. 
(To  be  repeated  as  the  foregoing.) 

1.  Blessed  be  God :  blessed  be  liis  Beneficence, 
•which  neither  sees  wisdom  in  haste,  nor  has  need 
of  rest. 

2.  If  I  have  done  any  wrong  to-day,  or  fear  so  ; 

3.  Or  if  I  have  left  any  duty  undone,  as  far 
I  could  perform  it  ; 

4.  Let  me  not  fail  to  make  amends  to-morrow. 

5.  Let  me  not  have  to  rei3eat  this  wish  to- 
morrow night. 

6.  May  M.  have  a  happy  sleep  ; 

7.  May  N.  : 

8.  May  all  whom  I  love  : 

9.  May  all  who  are  to  sleep  this  night. 

10.  I  hope  grief  and  pain  will  find  respite  ; 

11.  And  wakefulness  discover  its  cure. 

12.  Gentle  and  good  is  darkness  : 

13.  Beautiful  with  stars  ; 

14.  Or  working  to  some  benefit  of  a  difierent 
aspect,  with  clouds. 

15.  God's  ordinance  of  the  rolling  world  takes 
away  the  light  at  bed-time,  like  a  parent ; 

16.  Shall  I  not  sleep  calmly  under  its  shadow  ? 

17.  May  I  drop  as  calmly  into  the  sleep  of 
death  ; 

18.  And  wake  to  an  eternal  morning. 


WEEKLY  SERVICE. 


On  Sundays,  at  a  regular  hour  between  breakfast  and  dinner, 
tbe  family  or  other  congregation  will  assemble,  and  service 
will  be  performed  as  follows. 

After  a  pause  of  a  few  minutes,  when  the  congregation  is 
settled,  the  organ  or  seraphine,  or  other  such  musical  instru- 
ment, if  the  place  possess  one,  will  be  played,  the  music  be- 
ing instrumental  only,  and  of  a  gentle  character. 

This  music  is  to  be  considered  a  preparation  for  the  Silent 
Reflections,  which,  after  a  brief  pause,  will  follow. 

But  where  there  is  no  such  instrument,  the  Reader  for  the 
Day,  instead  of  it,  and  after  the  pause  following  on  the  set- 
tlement of  the  congregation,  will  say  : — 

My  friends,  let  us  prepare  our  thoughts  for 
the  consideration  of  the  duties  which  we  owe  to 
the  Great  Being  that  has  formed  us,  and  to  the 
fellow-creatures  with  whom  we  are  incited  to 
make  progression. 

.  The  congregation,  making  it  a  point  to  attend  to  the  words 
as  closely  as  if  they  were  addressed  to  them  by  another,  will 
repeat  the  following 

SILENT  REFLECTIONS. 

1.  It  is  good  to  prepare  the  thoughts  in  gen- 
tleness and  silencCj  for  the  consideration  of  duty. 

2.  Silence  as  well  as  gentleness  would  seem 
beloved  of  God  : 


THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    HEART.  13 

3.  For  to  the  human  sense, 

4.  And  like  the  mighty  manifestation  of  a 
serene  lesson, 

5.  The  skies,  and  the  great  spaces  between 
the  stars,  are  silent. 

6.  Silent  too,  for  the  most  part,  is  earth ; 

7.  Save  where  gentle  sounds  vary  the  quiet 
of  the  country, 

8.  And  the  fluctuating  solitudes  of  the  waters. 

9.  Folly  and  passion  are  rebuked  before  it : 

10.  Peace  loves  it  : 

11.  And  hearts  are  drawn  by  it  together  ; 

12.  Conscious  of  one  service  ; 

13.  And  of  one  duty  of  sympathy. 

14.  Violence  is  partial  and  transitory  : 

15.  Grentleness  alone  is  universal  and  ever 
sure. 

16.  It  was  said  of  old,  under  a  partial  law, 
and  with  a  limited  intention, — 

17.  But  with  a  spirit  beyond  the  intention, 
which  emanated  from  the  Grod-given  wisdom  in 
the  heart, — 

18.  That  there  came  a  wind  which  rent  the 
mountains,  and  brake  the  rocks  in  pieces  before 
the  Lord  ;  but  the  Lord  was  not  in  the  wind  : 

19.  And  after  the  wind  was  an  earthquake  ; 
but  the  Lord  was  not  in  the  earthquake  : 

20.  And  after  the  earthquake  a  fire  ;  but  the 
Lord  was  not  in  the  fire  : 


14      THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

21.  And  after  the  fire  a  still  sraall  voice. 

22.  Such  is  the  God-given  voice  of  conscience 
in  the  heart : 

23.  Most  potent  when  most  gentle  ; 

24.  Breaking  before  it  the  difficulties  of 
worldly  trouble  ; 

25.  And  inspiring  us  with  a  calm  determina- 
tion. 

Here  the  Reader  acd  the  Congregation  will  proceed  aloud, 
alternately,  as  follows  : — 

LITURGY. 

Beader.  The  heart  bids  us  adore  the  great 
and  serene  Mystery  of  the  Universe  ; 

Congregation,  The  calmness  and  the  good- 
ness of  God  : 

B.  Constant  as  the  heavens  above  the  clouds  ; 

C.  Yet  working  in  them,  and  beneath  them, 
for  the  hopes  of  earth  : 

B.  Who,  far  as  telescope  can  discern,  has  sown 
the  gulfs  of  space  with  planets  as  with  seed-pearl ; 

G.  And  yet  is  not  more  present  in  the  remot- 
est of  them  than  he  is  in  our  own  planet,  which 
is  one  of  his  pearls  also  : 

B.  Inciting  uc  to  advance  in  knowledge  and 
goodness. 

Q.  Through  troubles  which  are  not  all  trouble  ; 

B.  But  sweeteners  also  of  joy  ; 


THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  15 

C.  And  provers  of  affection  ; 

R.  Giving  also  termination  to  trouble  ; 

€.  But  no  end  to  the  hope  of  joys  to  come  : 

B.  Who  being  therefore  good  in  the  evils 
which  we  understand, 

G.  Is  to  be  held  equally  so  in  those  which  are 
obscure  to  us  ; 

B.  Like  the  good  and  wise  parents,  whom 
their  children  sometimes  misconstrue  ;    

C.  But  who  are  loved  by  them  more  and 
more,  as  they  grow  up  in  wisdom  themselves  : 

B,  Encouraging  us  nevertheless,  for  our 
growth  in  strength  and  worthiness,  to  assist  in 
doing  evils  away  ; 

G.  Especially  those  of  the  poor  and  misled  ; 

B.  And  of  all  wants  whatsoever,  both  of  body 
and  soul ; 

G.  As  from  time  to  time  is  done,  in  the  course 
of  the  progress  which  he  has  ordained  ; 

B.  The  human  creature  learning  to  know  and 
to  respect,  more  and  more,  the  frame  which  his 
soul  inhabits  ; 

G.  And  the  beautiful  region  of  the  universe, 
in  which  it  is  sojourning  ; 

B.  Worthy  of  study  for  its  wonders  ; 

G.  And  of  admiration  for  its  beauties  ; 

B.  And  of  respect  for  its  patience  and  its  en- 
deavors : 

G.  And  of  love  for  its  affections  ; 


16  THE   RELIGION   OF    THE   HEART. 

B.  And  of  its  place  among  the  stars  for  its 
hopes  : 

C.  Giving  us  to  see  vast  evidences  of  space 
and  time,  and  starry  habitations  ; 

i?.  With  suns  nobler  and  nobler,  and  like  cen- 
tres for  other  suns  ; 

G.  As  if  to  encourage  o^-'r  hearts  and  our  un- 
derstandings, onwards,  and  for  ever. 

The  Reader  shall  then  say: — 

My  friends,  in  gratitude  for  our  heavenward 
thoughts,  feeling  that  God  is  the  ordainer  of 
least  as  well  as  greatest,  and  that  to  reach  the 
highest  of  our  approaches  towards  him,  we  must 
begin  with  the  lowest  step, — 

Let  us  enumerate  the  duties  which  the  hearts 
of  his  wisest  servants,  by  their  efforts  from  age 
to  age,  have  enabled  us  to  read  in  our  own. — 
And  may  we  perform  them  now  this  day,  and 
every  day  of  the  coming  week,  and  as  long  as 
we  can  take  thought  for  one  another. 

The  Reader  is  here  joined  hy  the  congrega- 
tion in  repeating  aloud  the 

RULES  OF  LIFE  AND  MANNERS. 

Our  duties  this  day,  and  always,  are — 

1.  To  reverence  God  and  his  purposes  with  a 
filial  trust. 


THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  17 

2.  To  study,  as  far  as  in  us  lies,  his  creation, 
and  be  sensible  of  its  beauties. 

3.  To  consider  duty  our  first  object,  and  the 
highest  warrant  of  our  pleasures. 

4.  To  delay,  or  slur  over,  nothing  which  it  is 
incumbent  on  us  to  perform. 

5.  To  keep  our  bodies  clean,  things  about  us 
in  order,  and  our  appearance  decent  and  unaf- 
fected. 

6.  To  keep  our  blood  pure  with  exercise  and 
fresh  air,  and  to  be  as  conversant  always  with 
the  air  as  befits  creatures  that  exist  only  by 
means  of  it. 

7.  To  avoid  oppressing,  exciting,  or  drowsing 
ourselves  with  over-eating,  or  drinking,  or  with 
narcotics. 

8.  To  consider  kind  manners,  and  a  willing- 
ness to  please  and  be  pleased,  not  supei-ficial, 
but  substantial  duties. 

9.  To  hold  censorious  talk  dishonorable  to  the 
motives,  and  in  a  creation  so  full  of  interest, 
disgraceful  to  the  understanding. 

10.  To  set  examples,  in  word  and  deed,  of 
the  truthfulness  that  we  demand  from  others  ; 
not  indeed  saying  all  that  we  think  at  all  times 
(which  would  be  inhuman),  but  never  saying 
anything  which  we  do  not  think,  or  doing  any- 
thing with  duplicity. 

11.  To  cultivate  large-heartedness  ;  endeav- 


18  THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART. 

oring  to  think  and  to  do  on  all  occasions  the  re- 
verse of  what  is  petty  and  self-seeking,  even  at 
the  hazard  of  misconstruction. 

12.  To  consider,  nevertheless,  indifference  to 
misconstruction,  as  a  presumption  and  of  bad 
example. 

13.  To  inflict  no  pain  on  any  creature  for  the 
sake  of  a  pleasure.      • 

14.  To  shrink  from  no  pain  to  ourselves, 
which  in  wholesomeness  or  in  kindness  ought  to 
be  met. 

15.  To  visit  the  sick,  and  others  who  need 
comfort. 

16.  To  encourage  unbounded  enquiry,  par- 
ticularly into  the  causes  of  social  evils  ;  and  to 
do  what  we  can  towards  their  alleviation  and 
extinction. 

17.  To  consider  the  healthy,  and  therefore,  as 
far  as  mortality  permits,  happy  exercise  of  all 
the  faculties  with  which  we  have  been  gifted,  as 
the  self-evident  final  purpose  of  our  being,  so 
far  as  existence  in  this  world  is  concerned ;  and 
as  constituting  therefore  the  right  of  every  in- 
di\idual  human  creature,  and  the  main  earthly 
object  of  all  social  endeavor. 

18.  To  reflect  at  the  same  time,  that  man's 
hope  of  immortality  is  also  the  gift  of  his  Crea- 
tor ;  that  the  certainty  of  it  in  this  life,  might, 
in  some  way  or  other,  be  inconsistent  with  the 


THE   EELIGION   OF    THE   HEAET.  19 

very  perfection  of  its  happiness  when  attained  ; 
and  that,  in  the  meantime,  the  hope  of  that 
happiness  for  all  is  a  heavenlier  thing,  and  more 
suitable  to  a  good  heart,  than  assumptions  of 
certainty  barbarized  with  unhappiness  to  any. 

19.  To  bear  in  mind,  that  Morals  mean  Hab- 
its ;  that  good  as  well  as  bad  habits  are  acquir- 
able ;  and  that  satisfaction,  instead  of  regret, 
increases  with  their  advancement. 

20.  Never  to  forget,  that  as  the  habits  of 
childhood  commence  with  its  existence,  they 
are  the  most  acquirable  of  any,  and  are  of  all 
the  most  important. 

Reader  speahing  alone. 

So  be  it,  my  dear  friends.  Amen.  And  may 
the  Divine  Mystery  who  created  us,  the  Great 
and  Beneficent  God,  the  ordainder  of  growth 
and  progress,  who  has  thought  fit  for  his  wise 
purposes  that  the  human  race  should  join  in 
working  out  their  own  advancement,  find  us 
worthy  of  our  share  in  the  endeavor,  and  give 
us  a  foretaste  of  his  heaven  in  the  love  and  har- 
mony of  the  perseverance. 

Congregation.  Amen. 

Here,  after  the  like  music,  or  pause,  as  before,  will  follow 
a  Sermon  or  other  serious  Discourse,  original  or  select,  and 
written  or  extempore,  on  a  subject  concordant  with  the  prin- 


20      THE  RELIGION  OF  THT  HEART. 

ciples  of  the  Religion  ;  after  which  the  Service  will  conclude 
with  a  hymn,  if  convenient,  accompanied  or  otherwise  by 
iDusic ;  or  if  not,  with  music  alone. 

There  is  no  other  service  all  day,  not  even  of  the  custom- 
ary week-day  Aspirations.  The  whole  remainder  of  the  time 
is  given  up,  though  in  accordance  with  the  spirit  of  the  Rules, 
to  the  most  thorough  rest  and  recreation,  particularly  in  the 
enjoyment  of  the  works  of  Nature  and  Art ;  and  as  the  Ser- 
vice itself  aspires  towards  the  source  of  those  works,  the 
great  First  Cause  of  all  that  is  Good  and  Beautiful,  the  en- 
tire day  is  considered  a  Practical  Thanksgiving  on  all  these 
accounts. 


BENEDICTION  AND  ASPIRATION. 

(To  be  read  occasionally,  before  the  Sunday  Discourse,  in 
case  the  latter  happen  to  be  shorter  than  usual ;  or  for  any 
other  special  reason.) 

Peace  be  to  this  assembly. '•'■  May  it  advance 
in  knowledge  and  goodness.  May  it  assist,  by 
its  endeavors  and  its  example,  the  advancement 
of  all. 

As  a  family  bound  together  by  love  and  duty, 
even  such  are  we  incited  to  hope,  that  all  man- 
kind may  become.  If  here  on  earth,  then  there 
will  be  a  heaven  on  earth ;  and  God  will  some- 
how reconcile  past  to  future,  that  nothing  heav- 
enly may  be  wanting.     If  in  another  world  only, 

*  Or,  to  this  family,  this  house,  &c.,  according  as  circum- 
stances may  require. 


THE  KELIGION  OF  THE  HEART.      21 

then  there  is  heaven  still,  as  the  heart  bids  us 
hope,  and  as  God  therefore  bids  us  hope,  by 
whom  the  heart  was  made. 

In  this  hope  let  us  live,  and  let  us  rejoice, 
interchanging  our  comforts,  dividing  our  bur- 
dens, and  in  every  way  striving  to  shew  ourselves 
worthy  of  the  heaven  to  which  we  look.  "Heav- 
en," said  the  good  priest,  "is  first  a  temper,  and 
then  a  place." 

By  this  shall  we  know,  that  we  are  helping 
to  carry  on  the  best  part  of  the  great  work  of 
progression,  manifest  in  our  eyes.  By  this  shall 
we  know,  that  growing  and  strengthening  in  our 
acquirements,  according  to  the  laws  of  all  en- 
during things,  we  have  learnt  truly  to  read  the 
wisdom  which  God  has  written  in  our  hearts, 
hailing  it  in  the  approbation  which  he  has  em- 
powered them,  and  them  only,  in  conjunction 
with  the  hearts  of  our  fellow-creatures,  to  give 
us,  and  receiving  comfort  from  it,  perhaps  joy, 
in  proportion  to  that  which  we  bestow. 

For  even  to  be  worthy  of  a  noble  want  of  joy, 
we  must  learn  to  be  content  with  duty. 

0,  may  we  find  ourselves  daily  growing  in 
such  strength  and  such  worthiness !  May  we, 
as  friends,  and  as  kinsfolk,  and  as  children,  and 
as  the  moulders  of  children,  as  families  also,  and 
as  fellow-creatures,  and  as  inhabitants  of  this 
our  star,  the  earth,  become  daily  more  conscious 


22  THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART. 

and  more  hopeful  co-operators  in  tlie  work  to 
wliich  the  Great  Beneficence  has  been  pleased 
to  call  us !  May  we  become  even  as  animated 
and  creative  images,  contemplated  by  his  Divine 
Mind,  that  warming  into  action  before  the  eyes 
of  the  Great  Artist,  shall  realize  his  intentions, 
and  complete  the  human  portion  of  this  his 
beautiful  world!  one  of  innumerable  worlds, 
which  are  always  perhaps  thus  being  made,  and 
always  thus  succeeding. 


ANOTHER. 

Peace  be  to  this  house.  May  it  be  good  and 
loving.  May  devotion  to  its  duty  cause  it  reci- 
procation of  happiness.  May  it  realize  in  itself 
what  it  would  see  over  all  the  earth. 

As  a  family  bound  together  by  duty  and  love, 
even  such  are  we  incited  to  hope  that  the  whole 
world  may  become.  In  that  hope  let  us  live 
and  let  us  endeavor,  interchanging  our  com- 
forts, dividing  our  burdens,  and  ever  maintain- 
ing brave  and  affectionate  wills  for  all  good  pur- 


If  many  generations  must  pass  away,  before 
this  great  end  can  arrive,  shall  we  refuse  on  that 
account,  to  do  what  we  can  towards  it  ?  Shall  we 
refuse  to  anticipate  the  happiness  of  others  by 


THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    HEART.  23 

contributing  to  it  ourselves  ?  Shall  we  recoil  into 
despondency  at  the  thought  of  spaces  and  mea- 
surements of  time,  which,  compared  with  eter- 
nity, are  but  as  drops  of  water  in  the  ear  of  a 
listener  ?  or  shall  we  not  rather  surmount  them, 
and  be  with  our  children's  children  on  the  an- 
gelic wings  of  hope  and  imagination  ?  If  we 
are  destined  only  to  hope  and  to  endeavor,  for 
other  great  purposes  connected  solely  with  other 
spheres,  shall  we  not  cultivate,  with  the  same 
cultivation,  our  energies  and  our  tenderness  ? 
knowing  that  there  is  nothing  which  we  can  do 
better  ?  and  that  a  task  is  often  good  for  its 
own  sake,  and  for  the  profit  which  it  does  our 
spirit  ? 

Let  us  be  wise  always  ;  enjoying  whatever 
duty  permits  us  to  enjoy,  communicating  knowl- 
edge, strengthening  and  perfecting  our  bodies 
and  our  souls. 

Yet  why  should  progression  be  deprived  of 
any  one  portion  of  its  hopes  ?  The  tranquillity 
of  this  room,  the  consciousness  of  a  purpose  and 
a  sympathy,  of  reposing  on  one  another's  hearts, 
of  desiring  to  be  stronger  and  kinder,  to  lay 
aside  all  ill,  and  to  possess  ourselves  of  all 
good, — nay,  the  recollection  of  the  little  heats 
we  may  have  indulged  at  any  time  against  one 
another,  or  even  brought  with  us  now  to  this 
place  (may  we  hasten  to  shew  that  they  are  no 


24  THE    RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART. 

more  when  we  go  out  of  it), — does  not  all  this 
pleasure,  and  even  this  pain,  if  well  considered, 
incite  us  to  do  as  much  as  possible  for  the  en- 
lightenment and  gathering  together,  in  one 
sweet  pasture  of  many  folds,  the  whole  human 
race  ?  Do  not  we  think  that  families,  less  com- 
fortable or  consoled  than  ourselves,  might  at- 
tain to  the  same  comfort  and  consolation  ?  Do 
we  not  seem  to  feel,  in  this  gentle  and  reflecting 
quiet,  that  heaven  extends  itself  to  wherever 
such  meetings  take  place  ?  and  that  by  many 
such  meetings,  and  many  such  carryings  on  of 
their  spirit  when  they  are  over,  heaven  indeed 
would  be  extended  and  detained  upon  earth  ? 

Let  us  pause  on  that  thought.  Let  us  sit 
awhile,  and  refresh  ourselves  for  our  task,  in  the 
quiet  of  that  aspiration. 


ANOTHER. 

Peace  be  to  this  meeting.  May  it  behold  the 
happiness  diffused  by  the  sense  of  duty.  May 
it  realize  in  itself  its  efforts  for  the  good  of  all. 

As  a  family  bound  together  by  love  and  duty, 
such  are  we  incited  to  hope  the  whole  world  may 
become.  To  that  end  are  we  incited  to  labor ; — 
to  that  end  are  we  encouraged  both  to  endure 
sorrow  and  to  diminish  it :  and  the  endeavor  is 
divine,  even  should  it  terminate  with  itself. 


THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  25 

Yet  why  should  it  so  terminate  ?  The  small 
period  during  which  we  know  the  history  of 
man,  argues  nothing  against  hope  the  most  ar- 
dent:— the  improvements  which  we  are  sure 
have  taken  place  from  time  to  time,  especially 
during  these  latter  days,  may  animate  endeavor 
the  most  unaided.  Shall  our  hearts  not  ad- 
vance with  our  material  welfare  ?  our  sympa- 
thies not  increase  in  proportion  with  the  world- 
wide spread  of  our  intercourse  ?  Let  us  be 
among  the  foremost  in  furthering  them,  where 
we  can.  Let  us  encourage  others  with  our  love 
and  gratitude,  where  we  cannot.  We  can  at 
least  present  to  the  friends  that  know  us,  and 
the  strangers  that  may  come  among  us,  the  spec- 
tacle of  dutiful  and  affectionate,  and  therefore 
in  all  probability  cheerful  households,  such  as 
we  would  fain  see  throughout  the  earth. 

Consider.  The  heavens  do  not  speak  to  us. 
The  sun  and  the  stars  are  silent.  But  the  si- 
lence only  invites  us  the  more  eloquently  to  co- 
operate with  these  inaudible  energies  of  the  uni- 
verse ;  and  the  lustre  of  the  stars  reaches  our 
eyes,  as  if  for  the  purpose  of  showing  that  our 
remotest  hopes  are  justified.  We  have  a  task 
to  perform  for  others  and  for  posterity,  which 
certainty  for  ourselves  might  injure.  Do  we 
droop  and  do  nothing,  because  we  are  not  cer- 
tain of  anything  ?  The  most  selfish  are  not  guil- 


26  THE   RELIGION    OF   THE   HEART. 

ty  of  a  folly  so  unprofitable.  Shall  we  refuse 
to  cultivate  this  noble  garden,  the  Earth,  be- 
cause we  hope  for  a  paradise  more  complete  ? 
Little  honor  should  we  do  the  Spirit  by  whom 
we  breathe  in  it.  Shall  we  work  only  for  our 
individual  selves,  or  even  for  the  kindred  that 
reflect  the  likeness  of  us  ?  The  wide  air  does 
not  confine  itself  to  our  gardens.  The  seeds  are 
not  scattered  by  the  genial  winds  solely  on  one 
spot.  Small  will  be  our  greatest  harvest, — un- 
successful our  success, — if  we  enter  not  into  the 
joys  of  others  ;  if  we  interchange  not  with  them 
our  comforts  and  our  cares,  and  partake  not  the 
mighty  heart  of  the  many. 


ANOTHER, 
During  a  Time  of  Trouble. 

Peace  be  to  this  meeting.  May  duty  and  love 
be  its  support.  May  it  strengthen  itself  by  still 
giving  that  comfort  to  others,  which  at  this  mo- 
ment it  finds  it  difficult  to  receive. 

Tears,  and  sorrows,  and  losses,  are  a  part  of 
what  must  be  experienced  in  this  present  state 
of  life  :  some  for  our  manifest  good,  and  all, 
therefore,  it  is  trusted,  for  our  good  concealed  ; 
for  our  final  and  greatest  good. 

But  part  of  our  good  consists  in  the  endea- 


THE  KELIGION  OF  THE  HEART.      27 

vor  to  do  sorrow  away,  and  in  tlie  power  to  sus- 
tain them  when  the  endeavor  fails ; — to  bear 
them  nobly,  and  thus  help  others  bear  them  as 
well. 

Let  us  take  care  therefore  that  we  do  not  de- 
grade our  sorrows  by  sullenness  and  ill-temper, 
and  that  we  may  ever  be  ready  to  accept  a  kind 
relief 

Let  us  seek,  also,  rational  and  generous  com- 
fort ourselves ;  and  therefore  let  us  begin  by 
bestowing  it. 

Some  tears  belong  to  us  because  we  are  un- 
fortunate ;  others  because  we  are  humane ; 
many  because  we  are  mortal.  But  most  are 
caused  by  our  being  unwise.  It  is  these  last 
only,  that  of  necessity  produce  more.  The  rest 
dissolve  into  patience  and  hope  ;  and  may  add 
to  the  sum  of  our  blessings,  by  enlarging  our 
hearts. 

But  so  may  the  others,  if  we  grow  wiser. 
Whenever  evil  befalls  us,  we  ought  to  ask  our- 
selves, after  the  first  suffering,  how  we  can  turn 
it  into  good.  So  shall  we  take  occasion,  from 
one  bitter  root,  to  raise  perhaps  many  flowers. 

Neither  let  us  repeat  this  to  ourselves  as  a 
thought  to  be  approved,  but  as  a  thing  that  can 
be  done  :  and  never  let  us  forget,  that,  on  this 
as  on  all  other  occasions,  the  endeavor  is  half 
the  work.     Come  what  will,  to  be  weak  is  only 


28      THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

to  be  more  miserable.  To  be  strong  is  to  have 
a  double  chance.  The  supports  of  sorrow  are, 
patience,  activity,  and  affection.  May  we  be 
strong  in  ourselves  :  may  we  be  strong  in  loving 
and  being  beloved  by  one  another.  Linked  with 
one  another's  hearts,  let  us  be  equally  prepared 
to  present  a  firmer  front  to  adversity,  and  to 
partake  the  dew  of  whatever  blessing  shall  fall 
upon  our  heads. 


EXERCISES   OF  THE  HEART 

IN  ITS  DUTIES  AND  ASPIRATIONS. 

I. 
OF  DUTY  ITSELF. 

Though  it  is  impossible  for  us  not  to  desire  hap- 
piness, or  to  contemplate  the  performance  of 
duty  but  as  a  means  of  partaking,  or  at  least  of 
deserving  it,  yet  as  duty  is  the  only  security  for 
the  general  welfare,  and  as  individual  welfare 
itself  cannot  be  complete  without  general  wel- 
fare (so  beautifully  all-involved  is  the  final  good 
of  all),  duty  must  be  our  great  end  and  aim, 
leaving  happiness  to  follow  as  it  may. 

Abiding  by  duty,  our  happiness,  when  it- 
comes,  is  the  greatest  we  can  receive  ;  and  when 
it  does  not  come,  we  live  nevertheless,  if  not  in 
the  light  and  joy,  yet  in  the  shadow  of  heaven. 
Its  gravity  is  better  than  the  levity  of  the  un- 
dutiful.  Forsaking  duty,  we  find  what  we  took 
for  heaven,  to  be  none. 

And  what  is  duty  7 — Whatever  we  take  to 
be  such,  uncondemned  by  our  conscience,  and 
apart  from  forcing  the  consciences  of  others. — 
We  cannot  ascertain  it  further  ;  and  with  that 


30      THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

sense  of  it  we  may  be  content,  trusting  that 
our  consciences,  if  it  be  necessary,  will  be  fur- 
ther enlightened  by  time  and  reflection,  and 
testing  our  sincerity  meanwhile  by  our  power 
to  be  indulgent  to  others,  and  denying  to  our- 
selves. 

Not  that  we  are  to  reject  happiness  now,  or 
at  any  time,  if  duty  warrant  it.  Nor  are  we  to 
cease  to  expect  its  arrival,  or  that  of  some  balm 
in  its  stead,  provided  duty  be  with  us.  For 
what  is  du  ty  itself  but  the  means  of  giving  as 
much  happiness  as  we  can  to  others  ?  And  sup- 
posing that  we  could  refuse  happiness  if  we 
would,  what  right  should  we  have  to  refuse 
what  we  claim  a  right  to  give  ?  The  refusal 
itself  could  arise  from  nothing  but  a  sullen 
pleasure  of  its  own,  or  from  a  sickliness  needing 
to  be  cured. 

But  we  must  entertain  happiness  in  such 
sort,  that  duty  be  ever  set  above  it. 

Duty  must  be  known  to  be  that  only  inmate 
of  our  hearts,  which  can  do  rightly  with  happi- 
ness or  without  it. 


II. 

OF  OUR  DUTIES  TO  OTHERS. 

Our  duty  to  others  consists  in  imagining  our- 
selves in  their  places,  and  doing  them  good  ac- 


THE   KELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  31 

cordingly.  Self-love  will  easily  correct  an  un- 
due portion  of  sympathy  ;  but  a  great  portion 
of  sympathy  is  necessary  to  correct  the  errors 
of  self-love. 

We  must  earn  our  pleasures  as  much  as  pos- 
sible through  the  medium  of  those  of  others, 
sharing  with  them  our  enjoyments,  and  furnish- 
ing them,  whenever  we  can  io  so  unostenta- 
tiously and  unofficiously,  with  the  knowledge 
and  improvements  in  our  possession.  We  must 
also  hazard  pain  to  others  as  little  as  possible  ; 
whether  apart  from,  or  in  connection  with  our 
own  ;  considering  consequences  to  them,  even 
when  it  becomes  our  duty  to  disregard  them  as 
affecting  ourselves. 

We  are  not  to  be  slow  in  endeavoring  to  right 
those  whom  others  wrong  :  but  on  all  occasions, 
whether  acting  for  or  against  individuals,  we 
must  bear  in  mind  the  good  of  the  community, 
as  the  warrant  of  all  that  we  do.  Before  we 
oppose  them,  it  is  our  duty  to  endeavor  to  set 
them  right.  If  opposition  be  unavoidable,  we 
must  still  be  as  placable  as  we  are  courageous. 
There  is  a  noble  and  an  ignoble  quarreling. — 
The  consequence  of  the  one  is  to  excite,  in  a 
generous  enemy,  the  wish  to  be  a  friend ;  of 
the  other,  to  do  injury  to  all,  and  to  our  own 
minds. 

Envy  we  must  counteract  by  doing  all  we 


32      THE  KELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

can  to  produce  equality  of  happiness  ;  for  envy, 
black  a  sorrow  as  it  is,  is  but  one  of  the  impa- 
tient and  uneducated  instincts  of  justice  ;  and 
so  is  revenge.  One  of  our  greater  duties  is  to 
learn  to  know  these  and  all  other  passions  for 
what  they  are  ;  so  that  we  may  assist  our  fel- 
low-creatures cheerfully,  and  distinguish  their 
mistakes  and  wrong-doing  from  fancied  malig- 
nities and  the  existence  of  something  devilish. 

Believe  the  best.  Live  with  your  friends,  not 
as  if  they  were  one  day  to  be  your  enemies,  (a 
proposal  which  is  absurd — ^for  how  can  such  in- 
tercourse be  friendship  ?)  but  as  though  you 
would  always  deserve  that  they  should  remain 
your  friends. 

A  particular  friendship  does  not  hinder  a  wide 
sympathy  with  the  world.  It  is  only  one  of  the 
greatest  proofs  that  you  can  feel  the  sympathy, 
imd  one  of  the  greatest  rewards  for  its  exercise. 

Eather  be  forsaken  by  a  friend,  than  forsake 
one  ;  for  men  may  be  forsaken  for  their  virtues 
as  well  as  their  vices  ;  whereas,  if  another  has 
ever  deserved  your  friendship,  it  is  your  duty  to 
abide  by  him  as  long  as  possible,  and  to  try 
whether  you  cannot  make  him  still  deserve  it. 

Cultivate  what  is  good  in  all  men,  and  be 
glad  that  you  have  found  it.  Consider  your 
own  defects,  and  the  charity  you  need  for  them. 
If  you  think  you  have  no  defects,  and  that  you 


THE   KELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  33 

are  not  in  want  of  charity,  you  are  either  above 
or  below  humanity,  and  therefore  will  either 
have  still  more  charity  for  others,  or  be  in  want 
of  it  more  miserably  for  yourself. 

Be  ingenuous  in  all  that  concerns  yourself; 
reserved  and  considerate  in  everything  which  af- 
fects others.  Be  personally  concerned  in  noth- 
ing which  you  must  keep  secret  from  those  who 
have  a  right  to  your  confidence,  and  whose 
welfare  is  concerned  in  it.  But  this  caution 
being  observed,  the  secrets  of  others  are  not 
yours  to  part  with.  We  must  keep  them  as  re- 
ligiously as  entrusted  gold.  We  must  do  more. 
We  must  regard  every  matter  as  an  entrusted 
secret,  which  we  believe  the  person  concerned 
would  wish  to  be  considered  as  such.  Nay,  fur- 
ther still,  we  must  consider  all  circumstances  as 
secrets-  entrusted,  which  would  bring  scandal 
upon  another  if  told,  and  which  it  is  not  our 
certain  duty  to  discuss,  and  that  in  our  own 
persons,  and  to  his  face.  The  divine  rule  of 
doing  as  we  would  be  done  by,  is  never  better 
put  to  the  test,  than  in  matters  of  good  and 
evil  speaking.  We  may  sophisticate  with  our- 
selves upon  the  manner  in  which  we  should 
wish  to  be  treated,  under  many  circumstances  ; 
but  everybody  recoils  instinctively  from  the 
thought  of  being  spoken  ill  of  in  his  absence. 

Let  us  see,  that  as  men,  we  are  manly ;  as 


34  THE   RELIGION    OF   THE   HEART. 

women,  feminine — mutual  helpers — linked  bro- 
therly and  sisterly,  one  with  another. 


III. 

ANOTHER. 
Being  on  the  Duties  commonly  called  Public. 

Public  and  private  duty  is,  in  the  end,  the 
same.  What  we  owe  to  ourselves,  we  owe  to 
our  neighbor  :  what  we  owe  to  our  neighbor,  we 
owe  to  the  whole  world.  This  is  the  circle  of 
humanity. 

Every  man  is  bound  to  have  a  general  knowl- 
edge of  the  institutions  under  which  he  lives, 
of  the  existing  state  of  the  world,  and  of  the 
progress  which  it  has  made.  He  is  bound  to 
encourage  the  j)rogress  of  knowledge  and  edu- 
cation ;  to  inc[uire  calmly,  and  without  inter- 
ruption to  reasonable  business,  what  are  the 
remedies  for  war,  for  poverty,  for  vice,  and  for 
all  other  great  mistakes  and  imperfections  ;  and 
to  take  care,  as  far  as  in  him  lies,  that  society 
is  so  much  the  better  and  wiser  for  his  being  a 
member  of  it. 


IV. 

ANOTHER. 
Regarding  our  Duties  to  Posterity, 

Our  duties  to  posterity  are  two-fold  ;  part, 
as  being  its  originators  physical  and  moral ;  and 


THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    HEART.  35 

part,  as  "being  its  guardians  political.  The  lat- 
ter is  comprised  in  our  public  duties,  all  of  them 
tending  of  necessity  to  that  end  ;  but  we  ought 
to  keep  in  mind,  for  our  further  incitement, 
that  the  former  is  of  still  greater  importance, 
and  goes  to  include  the  latter. 

Consider.  We  are  the  makers  of  .the  next 
generation,  and  so  of  the  next,  and  so  of  the  one 
that  follows.  Let  us  take  care  that  they  are 
not  the  offspring  of  weak  bodies  or  ill  minds  ; 
not  the  offspring  of  indifference  ;  of  matches 
either  mercenary  or  unthinking  ;  of  monstrous 
disproportions  in  age,  spirit,  or  temper. 

For  we  make  both  minds  and  bodies  ; — and 
shall  the  creation  of  thousands  of  deformities, 
moral  as  well  as  physical,  be  counted  as  noth- 
ing ? 


OF  OUR  DUTIES  TOWARDS  CHILDREN. 

Our  duty  towards  children,  besides  those 
which  we  owe  to  our  descendants  in  general,  is 
to  set  them  a  good  example,  especially  in  re- 
gard to  truth,  modesty,  and  mildness  ;  to  be  at 
once  gentle  with  them,  and  firm  ;  to  sacrifice 
nothing  which  concerns  them  to  our  convenience 
or  self-indulgence  ;  to  be  entire  parents  to  them 
from  the  first,  neither  denying   to   them   the 


36      THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

sweet  bosom  of  the  mother,  nor  obstnicting 
their  free  breathing  with  false  comfort,  nor  sub- 
stituting the  drugging  of  their  senses  for  our 
own  patience  ;  to  guard  against  the  planting 
of  fear  and  jealousy  in  their  minds,  teaching 
them  to  love  one  another,  and  to  be  glad  of  the 
good  darkness  of  the  night-time.  We  must  not 
humor  any  other  wrong  passion  in  order  to  save 
ourselves  trouble,  (much  greater  will  be  our 
trouble  in  the  end)  ;  must  see  that  they  are  kept 
clean,  and  have  plenty  of  exercise  and  recrea- 
tion, particularly  in  the  open  air ;  and  must 
encourage  them  to  help  themselves,  and  be  in- 
dependent, and  despise  little  pains,  that  acci- 
dent and  fortune  may  not  surj)rise,  nor  our  ser- 
vices weaken  them.  We  must  accustom  them, 
till  they  can  reason,  rather  to  feel  the  force  of 
a  dispassionate  necessity,  than  to  obey  our  mere 
will  and  command  ;  must  guard  against  lead- 
ing them  into  vanity  with  foolish  and  ill-timed 
praises  ;  must  conduct  them  by  gentle  means 
into  knowledge,  neither  being  in  a  hurry  to  make 
them  thoughtful,  nor  afraid  of  exercising  their 
faculties  with  a  little  difficulty  ;  must  not  ex- 
cite imagination  in  them  toO  much  (which  ren- 
ders them  fearful),  nor  suppress  a  reasonable 
and  natural  tendency  to  it  (which  is  depriving 
them  of  a  good)  ;  must  make  allowances  (espe- 
cially as  parents)  for  the  respective  tendencies 


THE   KELIGION    OF    THE   HEART.  37 

or  peculiarities  of  their  constitutions,  being  more 
patient  with  the  impatiences,  and  more  self-re- 
flecting and  anxious  for  the  welfare,  of  the  sick 
and  the  deformed  ;  must  encourage  them  to 
bear  a  generous  pain,  however  great,  and  to 
learn  the  dignity  of  foregoing  a  selfish  pleasure ; 
must  enter  as  much  as  jiossible  into  their  sports 
and  satisfactions,  which  is  doing  ourselves  a 
good  ;  and  above  all,  (which  cannot  be  too  of- 
ten repeated,)  must  make  them  strong  in  body, 
and  sociable  and  affectionate  in  mind. 

To  these  ends  it  is  one  of  the  most  impera- 
tive of  all  duties  towards  them,  that  by  due  de- 
•grees,  according  as  their  minds  understand  and 
their  tendencies  require  it,  we  make  them  ac- 
quainted with,  and  teach  them  to  respect,  the 
wonderful  structure  of  their  own  bodies,  its 
perfect  fitness  for  a  wise  and  happy  life,  and 
the  sufferings  that  a  rejection  of  wisdom  may 
cause  both  to  it,  and  the  mind  by  which  it  is 
inhabited. 

Our  first  duty  to  a  child  is  to  lay  the  foun- 
dation for  all  comfort  and  spirit  in  his  health  : 
our  second,  to  take  care  that  this  spirit  place 
one  of  its  main  goods  in  associating  fellow-crea- 
tures with  its  enjoyments.  It  is  our  sacred  duty 
(and  we  must  commence  it  almost  with  their 
existence,  for  afterwards  it  may  be  too  late),  to 
inspire  children  with  a  delight  in  beholding  the 


38      THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

pleasures  of  others.  They  are  ever  desirous  to 
possess  what  they  see  enjoyed.  The  desire  is 
natural.  Possession,  if  rightly  enjoyed,  is  a 
good.  But  let  us  teach  them  how  to  enjoy  en- 
joyment. Let  us  encourage  them  to  partake 
with  others ;  let  us  guide  their  little  hands,  that 
others  may  share  what  they  contain,  making 
them  notice  the  pleasure  which  they  bestow. 

But  do  not  expect  that  this  will  be  done  by 
the  foolish  and  the  unconcerned.  We  must 
not  entrust  to  ignorance  the  tasks  of  wisdom, 
and  then  lament  that  they  are  not  learnt.  Let 
us,  ourselves,  do  all  that  we  can.  Let  ourselves 
set  the  example  of  teaching  justice,  and  of  be- 
holding delight  delightedly.  Let  us  show  them 
that  the  sight  of  good  possessed  is  in  itself  a 
good  ;  opening  to  their  innocent  eyes  the  trea- 
sures of  a  generous  imagination,  the  innermost 
portals  of  wisdom,  the  feast  of  angels. 


VI. 

OUR   DUTIES   TO    OURSELVES  IN  RELATION  TO 
OUR  DESCENDANTS. 

As  in  order  to  render  children  good,  we  must 
set  them  a  good  example,  so  in  order  to  be  the 
parents  of  a  healthy  offspring,  we  must  take 
care  of  our  own  health ;  in  order  to  render  them 


THE  BELIGION  OF  THE  HEART.      39 

happy  and  well-tempered,  we  must  cultivate  a 
happy  temper  in  our  own  minds.  Again  and 
again  let  us  remember,  that  we  are  the  fathers, 
and  mothers,  and  predisposing  kindred,  of  the 
succeeding  generations.  The  consequences  do 
not  flow  vindictively,  but  naturally ;  as  ordinary 
consequences  from  a  cause.  Again  and  again, 
therefore,  of  this  let  us  be  mindful. 

We  ourselves  are  influenced  in  our  characters 
and  temperament  by  those  who  went  before  us, 
as  they  were  by  others.  Let  us  be  grateful  for 
what  we  inherit  of  good,  but  accuse  nobody  of 
evil, — ^hoping  that  posterity  will  be  charitable 
in  like  manner  to  us :  for  the  first  sources  and 
the  last  operations  of  evil  will  be  still  a  mys- 
tery. But  knowing  and  reflecting  more  than 
others,  let  us  keep  our  duties  in  mind  kindly 
and  cheerfully. 

Let  us  be  just.  Let  us  be  generous.  And  if 
sorrows  must  nevertheless  come,  let  us  hope, 
that  as  it  is  the  nature  of  good  to  produce  good, 
so  a  good  compensation  will  be  found  even  for 
our  sorrows. 


VII. 

ON  THE  SAME  SUBJECT. 


Be  healthy  and  cheerful,  cultivating  all  kindly 
emotions,   and   enjoying  all  natural    pleasures 


40      THE  EELIGION  OF  THE  HEAKT. 

consistent  with  duty  and  a  fitting  strength  of 
mind  and  body. 

Many  pleasures  are  allowed,  if  many  are 
earned. 

Shall  we  be  the  ancestors  of  a  race,  compelled 
wdth  difficulty  to  work  themselves  forth  into 
the  light  ?  or  the  ancestors  of  brave  and  hope- 
ful spirits,  whom  we  help  in  their  task  before- 
hand ? 


VIII. 
OF  PAIN  AND  TROUBLE. 

Think  not  all  pain  evil,  nor  all  opi30sition  en- 
mity :  neither  desj^air  under  difficulty.  For 
there  is  a  labor  that  makes  repose  more  delight- 
ful, and  there  is  a  strife,  that  invigorates  good 
endeavor.  Better  any  generous  strife,  however 
painful,  than  the  calm  of  indifference,  and  the 
dead  waters  of  slavery. 

Pain  must  accomj^any  even  the  attempt  to  do 
pain  away. 

If  there  were  no  opposition  to  opinion,  the 
world  would  either  turn  about  with  every  breath 
of  novelty,  or  stagnate  forever  in  a  living  death. 

Let  us  demand  of  Fortune,  only  that  she  gives 
us  a  fair  stage  ;  and  of  our  opponents,  nothing 
but  what  every  wrestler  can  teach  them. 


THE  KELIGION  OF  THE  HEAKT.      41 


ON  THE  SAME  SUBJECT. 

The  pain  that  affects  ourselves  only,  and  not 
the  comfort  or  interest  of  the  many,  let  us  learn 
to  keep  in  subjection,  in  order  that  it  may  not 
subject  us.  Let  us  lord  it,  as  much  as  we  can, 
over  physical  evil,  that  we  may  bend  circum- 
stances to  our  will.  Let  us  be  respectful  wrest- 
lers also  with  intellectual  suffering,  that  we 
may  win  it  to  do  our  bidding.  As  men,  let  us 
be  manly ;  as  women,  womanly ;  thorough  help- 
ers ;  forgiving  friends  ;  not  querulous  with  evil, 
both  for  the  sake  of  others  and  ourselves  ;  but 
nevertheless  doing  all  we  can  to  master  it  for 
the  same  reason  ;  counting  pain  at  what  it  is 
worth  only  ;  forcing  what  would  be  more  evil, 
to  become  a  part  of  good  ;  and  opposing,  to 
what  we  cannot  subdue  in  its  effects  on  others, 
a  resolution  that  will  at  least  hinder  ourselves 
from  being  conquered.  Let  impatience  be  quick- 
ly over.  If  we  cannot  master  it  by  ourselves, 
let  us  take  it  with  us  to  God,  and  under  the 
sense  of  his  all-embracement  it  will  not  abide. 


X. 
DURING  AFFLICTION. 
I  am  afflicted  and  in  great  grief,  I  feel  my 
spirit  bowed  down  in  spite  of  every  struggle. 


42  THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART. 

I  repose  it  in  tlie  consciousness  of  the  Great 
Beneficence.  If  I  have  pitied  others,  and  not 
been  quick  to  feel  for  my  own  troubles,  I  may 
now  at  length  pity  myself  Nay,  if  I  have  not 
pitied  others  enough,  as  I  fear,  surely  I  shall 
now  pity  them  more  ;  for  this  indeed  is  suffer- 
ing, and  few  can  tell  how  my  nature  is  wrung. 
Flow  then,  my  tears  :  be  the  kindly  waters  in 
which  regret  shall  be  allowed  a  balm, — in  which 
endeavor  shall  be  refreshed.  Come  about  me, 
hopes ;  caress  me,  dear  and  tender  recollections ; 
give  way,  my  weakness,  and  be  gathered  under 
the  shadow  of  the  great  and  gentle  mystery 
whence  my  tears  themselves  are  derived,  whence 
paternity  and  pity  issue  forth,  desiring  what  is 
good.  Surely,  if  I  am  weak,  I  will  do  my  ut- 
most :  if  I  have  erred  and  am  repentant,  I  may 
look  the  more  for  commiseration.  0  Thou, 
that  art  the  cause  of  pity,  thou  from  whom  is 
derived  whatever  is  filial  and  can  receive  com- 
fort, let  me  feel  thee  upon  my  bended  head, 
like  as  the  hand  of  a  father.  Let  me  be  weak  a 
little,  in  order  to  be  strong  much  ;  so  that  I  may 
dry  up  my  tears  quickly,  and  proceed  to  serve 
thee  better,  even  if  it  be  with  my  patience  only. 

XI. 

ADDITION  TO  THE  FOREGOING, 

In  case  of  the  loss  of  any  one  that  is  dear  to  us. 

He  has  gone  before  us.     The  spirit  within 


THE   RELIGION    OF   THE   HEART.  43 

him,  that  used  to  talk  to  us,  to  look  at  us  with 
kind  eyes,  has  left  its  body  to  dissolution,  and 
is  visible  to  us  no  longer.  Blessings  on  his 
memory  !  May  he  also,  if  he  behold  us,  bless 
us  !  for  we  need  blessing.  Greatly  we  need  it, 
with  these  hopeless  yearnings  for  his  presence  ; 
these  impatiences  constantly  reminded  of  the 
dreadful  necessity  of  patience  ;  these  fears,  even 
in  the  midst  of  conviction  to  the  contrary,  that 
we  did  not  do  all  that  w^e  might  have  done  for 
him  ;  this  consternation  and  astonishment,  per- 
petually recurring,  at  the  difference  between 
what  was  and  what  is  ; — this  awful  experience 
of  the  terrible  thought  ^^No  More  ;''  of  the  in- 
exorable truth  ^' Never;" — this  almost  shame 
at  feeling  that  we  are  warm  and  living,  while 
he  is  cold  and  motionless  ;  at  home  and  housed, 
while  he  is  away  and  in  the  earth ;  seeing  thou- 
sands still  privileged  to  remain  who  seem  of  no 
worth,  while  he,  so  kind  and  so  good,  is  gone 
forever  ! 

But  these  are  our  thoughts,  not  his  ;  and 
though  they  are  permitted  to  the  first  bursts  of 
our  sorrow,  to  continue  them  would  be  unduti- 
ful  towards  the  Beneficent  Mystery,  without 
whose  ordination  of  death  as  well  as  life,  he 
himself  would  not  have  existed  to  bless  us. — 
His  body  is  not  his  spirit ;  and  perhaps  his 
spirit   looks   upon   us   this   moment,  and  sees 


44  THE   RELIGION    OF    THE   HEART. 

how  we  loved  him,  and  how  we  suffer.  If  it 
does,  (and  the  power  of  thinking  so,  and  of 
hoping  so,  is  given  us  by  the  same -Beneficence,) 
he  knows  that  a  time  will  come,  when  he  shall 
be  beheld  again.  To  bear  the  same  anguish  as 
ourselves,  is  therefore  not  in  his  power.  But 
he  can  pity  us  still:  he  knows  the  struggles 
that  we  have  still  to  endure  ;  he  looks  on  his 
mortal  friends  with  immortal  kindness ;  on 
these  dear  relations  ;  on  these  weak  and  beloved 
children ;  and  whatsoever  a  spirit  can  feel,  in 
the  place  of  tears,  that  assuredly  he  feels,  bless- 
ing us  with  an  angel's  countenance. 

Let  us  pacify  ourselves  in  the  hope  of  re- 
joining him  :  let  us  become  patient  in  it :  let 
us  rejoice  in  it :  let  us  earn,  if  we  may  so 
speak,  the  right  of  the  re-union  by  all  the 
thoughts  which  he  would  desire  us  at  this 
moment  to  entertain,  by  all  the  duties  which 
he  would  wish  us,  now  and  ever,  to  perform. 
That  we  are  not  vessels  broken  by  the  way,  let 
these  our  endeavors,  and  even  these  our  sorrows, 
show  to  us ;  for  surely  sorrow,  if  it  be  lo^dng, 
will  be  recompensed,  and  good  endeavor  is  our 
share  in  the  great  task  of  serving  the  divine  en- 
ergy, and  extending  happiness  to  others.  Let 
us  show,  before  we  leave  this  earth,  that  we  are 
deserving  of  a  heaven  of  heavens,  that  is  to  say, 
a  heaven  with  those  whom  we  have  loved,  by 


THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  45 

having  extended,  as  far  as  lies  in  our  power, 
a  heaven  upon  earth ;  and  may  our  sorrows  do 
for  us  what  our  virtues  have  left  undone  ! 


XII. 
IN  SEVERE  SICKNESS. 

Let  me  guard,  in  this  trial,  my  temper  and 
sense  of  justice ;  that,  being  weak,  I  may  not 
become  weaker ;  that,  giving  trouble,  I  may  not 
give  more  than  I  can  help.  I  have  now  an  op- 
portunity to  be  more  beloved  ;  and  to  reward 
the  anxiety  of  those  who  love  me,  with  the 
sight  of  my  deserving  it. 

Let  me  consider  whether  or  not  I  am  the  oc- 
casion of  this  sickness.  Let  me  remember  the 
lesson  it  teaches  me.  Do  I  derive  it  from  the 
temperament  I  may  have  inherited  ?  or  does  it 
acquire  additional  force  from  that  circumstance  ? 
Let  me  be  generous  in  bearing  it,  as  I  would 
have  others  generous  to  me.  Am  I  not  treated 
as  kindly,  or  with  as  much  patience,  as  I  could 
desire  ?  Let  me  reflect  how  many  times  I  mav 
have  been  neglectful  or  impatient  with  others, 
perhaps  much  oftener  than  I  am  aware.  0  mem- 
ory of  my  father,  (or  mother,)  bear  witness 
that  I  reproach  you  not !  0  friends,  who  visit 
and  console  me ;  0  servants,  to  whom  I  give 
new  and  unlooked-for  trouble  !     if  I  am  weak 


46  THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART. 

and  impatient,  I  will  love  and  thank  you  the 
more  for  bearing  with  me,  and  will  endeavor  to 
make  you  amends. 

But  let  me  not  be  weak  and  impatient.  Let 
me  prove  to  myself  that  I  still  have  strength 
and  generosity,  by  resolving,  from  this  present 
moment,  to  behave  myself  as  I  ought,  and  by 
keeping  the  resolution. 


XIII. 
IN  SICKNESS  THAT  MAY  BE  MORTAL. 

The  elements  that  compose  my  body  will 
shortly,  perhaps,  be  dissolved.  They  will  go  to 
the  formation  of  other  bodies;  of  earths,  of 
flowers,  of  trees ;  of  creatures  capable  of  similar 
or  different  sensations;  even  as  the  hair  has 
gone,  which  has  many  times  been  cut  from  my 
head. 

Perhaps  the  creature  the  lowest  in  my  eyes, 
may  have  perceptions  the  most  exalted.  The 
organization,  at  which  I  shudder  when  in  health, 
(the  purposes  of  life  requiring  that  I  should 
have  that  preference  for  my  own,)  can  be  recon- 
ciled to  imagination  in  the  all-embracing  kindli- 
ness of  death ;  in  the  change  that  is  common  to 
all,  and  that  opens  to  us  new  hopes,  and  a  wider 
prospect  of  action. 

For  does  this  soul  within  me,  this  spirit  of 


THE   KELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  47 

thought,  and  love,  and  infinite  desire,  dissolye 
as  well  as  the  body  ?  Has  nature,  who  quenches 
our  bodily  thirst,  who  rests  our  weariness,  and 
perpetually  encourages  us  to  endeavor  onwards, 
prepared  no  food  for  this  appetite  of  immortali- 
ty ?  Who  am  I  ?  Do  I  not  know  the  defects 
as  well  as  excellencies  of  this  body,  and  the 
aspirations  which  even  they  suggest  to  the  soul  ^ 
Have  I  not  joined  in  the  divine  task  of  endea- 
voring to  diminish  the  inert  mass  of  evil,  and 
e,xtending  the  dominion  of  good  ?  The  Divine 
Spirit,  of  which,  I  trust,  I  contain  a  portion, 
answers  nothing  in  its  mysterious  self,  in  its 
greatest  and  unearthly  abstraction.  But  its 
earthly  voice  is  the  speech  of  the  wise ;  its 
thought  upon  earth  is  our  noblest  human 
thought;  and  thought  says, — I  am  different 
from  matter ;  my  hope,  my  memory,  my  per- 
ception, are  not  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  me- 
dium through  which  they  receive  light  at  pre- 
sent. Our  habitations,  and  the  windows  of  our 
habitations,  are  not  ourselves ;  much  as  the  dwel- 
ler in  the  abode  is  affected  by  what  contains 
him.  This  endless  succession  of  mortal  bodies, 
short-Kved  and  endeavoring,  what  is  it  but  na- 
ture's mode  of  giving  birth  to  immortal  souls  ? 
Our  existence,  must  it  not  originate  somewhere  ? 
Our  earthly  task,  is  it  not  necessary  in  order  to 
make  us  helpers  of  the  Spirit  from  which  we 


48  THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    HEART. 

proceed,  and  extenders  of  its  great  heaven? 
But  this  earthly  substance,  of  which  we  suppose 
bodies  to  be  composed,  what  is  that  also  ?  Is 
it  in  reahty,  anything  different  from  spirit? 
How  do  I  know  its  existence,  but  in  my  con- 
sciousness of  it  ?  And  in  what  respect  is  this 
consciousness  different  from  the  thing  of  which 
it  is  conscious?  Are  we,  and  all  w^hich  w^e 
think  we  see,  but  so  many  thoughts  in  the  mind 
of  the  Divine  Being  ?  Are  we  amazing  thoughts, 
that  at  one  and  the  same  time  have  our  pleasure 
and  our  own  objects,  and  give  pleasure  and  fur- 
therance to  the  objects  of  what  contains  us  ? 
Does  the  Great  Spirit  let  us  exist,  purely  that 
other  beings  beside  itself  may  enjoy  a  sense  of 
existence,  and  share  its  own  divine  endeavors 
to  that  end  ? 

We  know  not.  It  does  not  at  present  appear 
desirable  for  us  to  know.  And  more  blessed  is 
this  uncertainty,  mixed  with  this  sweet  hope 
for  all,  than*  the  certainties  of  which  some  tell 
us,  ivJiose  pleasure  if  is  not  good  for  a  just  heart 
to  part  alee.  My  death-bed  will  demand  no 
miserable  thoughts  of  futurity  for  myself  or 
others.  The  heaven  I  look  for,  has  a  right  to  a 
happy  face ;  it  reflects  no  ghastly  fires  of  eter- 
nity. 

All  pain  is  transitory :  pain  of  all  sorts  looks 
to  an  end,   and   is  distributable  among  many 


THE   EELIGION    OF   THE   HEART.  49 

bearers ;  nothing  but  the  love  and  joy,  which 
are  perpetually  set  before  our  hopes,  have  an 
immortal  aspect.  If  it  be  not  necessary  for  us 
to  know  more  in  this  earthly  state,  nevertheless 
it  is  good  and  wise  for  us  to  endeavor,  and  to 
love ;  and  it  is  good,  at  the  end  of  our  mortal 
state,  that  we  should  be  ready,  with  our  habits 
of  mind  and  heart,  to  commence  worthily  an- 
other. As  the  sun  is  at  a  wonderful  distance  from 
the  earth,  and  yet  is  intimately  connected  with 
it,  so  we  may  be  intimately  connected  with  the 
most  distant  and  beautiful  spheres,  both  in  the 
present  and  future  operations  of  our  nature. 
Do  not  our  thoughts  travel  with  the  speed  of 
light  ?  Cannot  my  mind,  at  this  instant,  dart 
out  of  its  pettier  sphere,  and  cross  thousands  of 
glad  spirits  in  its  path  ?  Oh,  may  the  deficiency 
of  my  past  endeavors  be  forgiven  me!  May 
they  be  forgiven  for  many  great  and  kind  rea- 
sons !  And  may  I  enter  upon  my  new  exist- 
ence in  the  company  of  angels,  in  the  society  of 
those  whom  I  have  lost  and  loved ! 

0  friends  that  remain !  ye  will  keep  as  much 
of  me  as  ye  are  able ;  kind  thoughts  of  me  ;  re- 
collections of  our  mutual  joys  and  sufferings ; 
recollections  of  our  pardonings  of  one  another ! 
relics,  too,  of  what  I  had  and  was  ;  a  toy,  a 
something  I  wore,  a  poor  lock  of  my  hair  ;  now 
become  rich,  because  it  was  a  part  of  me.     You 


50      THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

will  love  all  whom  I  loved.  You  will  love  them 
and  myself  still,  each  in  the  other :  and  you  will 
continue  in  the  great  work  of  endeavor,  for  the 
sake  of  extending  the  heaven  in  which  your 
friend  is  about  to  repose. 

Dearest  friend  of  all,  it  is  but  a  night  till  I 
see  you  again.  My  body  will  be  sleeping  near 
you  ;  my  spirit  alone  will  be  gone,  as  it  used  to 
be  gone  in  dreams  ;  only,  instead  of  visibly  re- 
turning, it  will  soon  receive  yours,  clasping  it 
never  to  be  parted  more.  Believe  that  I  shall 
commence  my  new  existence  with  helping  to 
encourage  yours  ;  and  that  you  would  be  sure  I 
were  present  with  you,  whenever  you  thought  so, 
if  it  were  not  necessary  to  the  great  work  of  en- 
deavor, that  nothing  in  this  mortal  life  should 
be  certain  but  hope. 

Love  and  hope  are  my  last  words,  if  I  die  : 
and  again  shall  they  be  my  first,  if  my  sickness 
leave  me. 


XIV. 

OF  ENDEAVOR  IN  THE  GREAT  WORK  OF  IMPROVE- 
MENT, 

(A  Thought  for  Moments  of  Misgiving.) 

Either  this  world  is  alterable,  that  is  to  say, 
improvable,  in  reality  as  well  as  in  seeming,  or 
it  is  not.  If  it  is  alterable,  it  may  be  in  our 
power  to  alter  it :  we  may  even  be  the  only  or- 


THE  KELiaiON  OF  THE  HEART.      51 

dained  means  for  that  end  :  we  cannot  be  cer- 
tain :  but  it  is  our  duty  to  endeavor.  If  on  the 
other  hand  it  is  not  alterable,  it  is  the  business 
of  wisdom  to  conclude,  that  pain  and  evil  are 
for  the  best ;  perhaps  necessary  to  the  enjoy- 
ment of  futurity.  What  the  dark  ground  of  a 
picture  is  to  the  cheerful  colors  of  the  artist, 
such  may  the  darkness  of  this  world  be  to  the 
light  of  another.  But  of  neither  are  we  cer- 
tain. Let  us  then  still  endeavor : — for  the  sake 
of  alteration,  if  the  world  be  alterable  ; — ^for  the 
sake  of  action  and  variety,  if  it  be  not. 

Behold  a  use,  even  in  uncertainty ;  the  sure 
ground  upon  which  benevolence  proceeds,  even 
in  its  ignorance  of  what  is  sure. 


XV. 

OF  PAIN  AS    THE   RESULT   OF  VICE   AND   AS  THE 

OCCASIONAL  NECESSITY  OF  VIRTUE. 

There  is  no  vice,  or  other  discordant  mistake, 
but  sooner  or  later  has  a  result  of  pain :  not  be- 
cause nature  is  revengeful,  but  because  it  is  in 
the  nature  of  blows  given  to  the  proper  harmo- 
ny of  things  to  recoil  and  jar  against  those  who 
give  them.  It  is  no  revenge  in  a  wall  to  pain 
the  hand  that  smites  it  ;  but  the  hand  is  pain- 
ed, if  it  so  smite.  It  is  a  warning  that  you  are 
not  to  smite  again. 


52      THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

But  then  is  all  pain  tlie  result  of  vice  or  mis- 
take ?  By  no  means.  All  vice  produces  pain, 
or  else  a  worse  want  of  feeling  and  enjoyment ; 
but  there  may  be  pain  also  in  resisting  vice,  and 
this  latter  pain  is  allied  to  health  and  pleasure. 

It  would  be  a  happier  system,  at  present, 
though  not,  we  are  to  believe,  in  the  end,  if 
there  could  be  all  pleasure  and  no  pain  ;  but  it 
would  be  much  unhaj)pier,  constituted  as  it  is, 
if  we  always  avoided  pain  in  the  hope  of  having 
nothing  but  pleasure.  The  very  avoidance, 
even  if  it  could  otherwise  succeed,  would  consti- 
tute a  feeble  misery,  and  subject  us  to  worse 
chances. 

It  is  our  business  to  hope  that  nine-tenths  of 
all  the  pain  in  the  world  may  cease  to  exist  ; — 
but  none  of  it  could  cease,  if  nobody  endeavored 
to  diminish  it  by  pain  of  his  own. 


XVI. 
AGAINST  EXCESS  IN  PLEASURE. 

Pleasure  is  just,  even  when  it  ends  with  our- 
selves ;  but  not,  when  in  so  ending,  it  loses 
sight,  however  remotely,  of  the  claims  and  in- 
terests of  others.  It~is  our  business,  in  all  plea- 
sures, to  have  regard  to  four  things — health, 
conscience,  our  connections,  and  the  world  at 
large. 


THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  53 

XVII. 
AGAINST  PRIDE  IN  VIRTUE. 

Though  the  good  are  worthy  partakers  of  the 
Divine  Spirit,  being  empowered  to  assist  in  for- 
warding the  great  work  of  beneficence,  yet  are 
they  but  small  portions  of  a  spirit  whose  bounds 
we  know  not.  They  that  understand  this,  are  nei- 
ther proud  nor  humiliated,  but  only  natural  and 
full  of  courage. 

Who  shall  be  proud  of  his  virtue,  or  angry 
but  for  a  little  space,  at  vice  ?  The  virtue  of 
this  man,  what  perhaps  has  produced  it  ?  The 
nature  of  his  temperament,  the  instructions 
of  his  friends  and  kindred,  the  fortunate  turn 
of  his  circumstances.  The  vice  of  another  man, 
what  perhaps  has  produced  it .?  The  nature  of 
his  temperament,  the  folly  of  his  friends  and 
kindred,  the  unfortunate  turn  of  his  circum- 
stances. The  virtuous  man  is  the  wiser  and 
more  fortunate  man,  whose  business  it  is  to  cor- 
rect the  errors  and  disadvantages  of  the  foolish  ; 
but  he  loses  his  fitness  for  partaking  of  the  Di- 
vine Spirit,  and  becomes  one  of  the  foolish,  if 
he  thinks  that  his  virtue  is  a  merit  to  be  proud 
of,  and  not  an  advantage  to  exercise  his  charity. 

Pity  not  vice,  looking  down  on  it  ;  but  pity 
it,  helping  it  up,  and  planting  it  beside  thee. — 
But  do  this  with  simplicity  and  without  preten- 


54  THE   RELIGION  OF   THE   HEART. 

sion  ;  otherwise  vice  will  have  reason  to  look 
down  on  thee  ;  the  drunken  man  on  the  more 
intoxicated  vanity. 


XVIII. 
OF  PRAYER  AND  THANKSGIVING. 

Prayer  is  good,  if  it  has  a  good  motive,  and 
if  it  is  reasonable,  and  prepared  for  resignation ; 
for  whatever  may  be  the  apparent  system  of  the 
universe,  however  unalterable  in  its  laws,  and 
inattentive  to  men's  wishes,  who  shall  say  that 
the  Lawgiver  cannot  vary  his  laws  ;  or  that  he 
cannot  reconcile  appearances  to  contradictions  ; 
or  that  prayer  itself,  among  the  infinite  secrets 
of  his  working,  may  not  be  one  of  his  instru- 
ments of  modification  ? 

Modify  both  action  and  passion,  prayer  assu- 
redly does.  It  assuages  calamity,  excites  hope, 
encourages  endeavor  ;  gives  the  feelings  a  link 
with  heaven,  both  humble  and  exalted  ;  anima- 
ting, and  making  patient. 

If  these  are  delusions,  what  are  other  efiects 
from  causes  ?  or  how  is  anything  provable  but 
by  the  strength  of  its  impressions,  and  by  our 
inability  to  refute  it  ? 

Above  all,  how  can  we  think  of  God  as  a 
Father,  and  not  pray  to  him  ?  not  ask  him  for 


THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  55 

help,  and  expect  even -to  receive  it  ?  Modestly 
indeed,  as  children  ask  favors  of  an  earthly  fa- 
ther ;  and  prepared  as  modestly  for  disappoint- 
ment, knowing  his  wisdom. 

Good  and  reasonable  is  it  to  pray,  when  we 
feel  need  of  help,  and  have  done  our  best  to  de- 
serve it  ;  or  even  when  we  are  miserable  at  the 
thought  of  not  having  deserved  it  ;  and  when, 
in  either  case,  we  are  prepared  to  think  as  we 
should  do  of  our  heavenly  Father  without  it. 

But  for  the  most  part,  we  should  pray  rather 
in  aspiration  than  petition,  rather  by  hoping 
than  requesting  ;  in  which  spirit  also  we  may 
breathe  a  devout  wish  for  a  blessing  on  others, 
upon  occasions  when  it  might  be  presumptuous 
to  beg  it. 

But  let  no  one  disgrace  his  belief  in  a  Divine 
Being,  either  with  thinking  to  gain  by  praise 
what  his  endeavors  or  his  troubles  should  obtain 
for  him  ;  or  by  assuming  e\  en  the  right  to 
praise,  when  his  worship  has  never  been  any- 
thing but  that  of  a  worldling  or  a  slave. 

To  praise  even  an  earthly  father,  in  order  to 
gain  some  object  by  the  praise,  is  disgraceful  in 
children,  and  dishonoring  towards  himself. 

What  is  to  be  thought  of  it,  when  the  father 
is  God  ? 

God  is  not  to  be  supposed  to  delight  in  praise 
and  glorification,  like  a  satrap.     To  praise  is  to 


56  THE   BELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.' 

upraise  ;  and  who  can  upraise  the  highest  ? — 
To  glorify  is  to  surround  with  pomp  and  lustre  ; 
and  what  can  do  that  like  his  works  ? 

The  praise  which  God  requires  from  creatures 
no  greater  than  ourselves,  is  to  love  one  another ; 
to  delight  ourselves  in  his  works  ;  to  advance 
in  knowledge  ;  and  to  thank  him,  when  we  are 
moved  to  do  so,  from  the  bottom  of  our  hearts. 

Thank  whenever  your  heart  is  joyful,  and  the 
occasion  not  mean  : — not  as  children  who  are 
taught  to  do  it,  in  good  manners,  for  every  lit- 
tle thing  ;  much  less  for  meat  and  drink  in  par- 
ticular, unless  when  you  can  give  them  to  the 
poor,  or  when  you  yourself  have  failed  in  spirit 
for  need  of  them  ;  but  chiefly  for  things  spirit- 
ual and  noble  ;  for  the  good  and  beauty  of  his 
works  ;  for  the  happiness  of  your  friends  ;  for 
the  advancements  of  your  fellow-creatures. 

Above  all,  take  care  of  thanking  him  out  of 
the  notion  of  being  favored  ;  for  that  is  the  most 
preposterous  of  fopperies  ;  one  that  ought  to 
make  us  blush  at  the  sight  of  every  good  man 
suffering. 

Suifering  itself  might  rather  be  looked  upon 
sometimes  as  one  of  the  favors  of  God.  And  the 
beholders  may  justly  think  so,  in  proportion  as 
the  sufferer  is  great  enough  to  deserve  the  opin- 
ion, and  too  modest  to  entertain  it. 


THE  KELIGION  OF  THE  HEART.      57 

XIX.         * 
OF  LOVE  TO  GOD  AND  MAN. 

Love  to  God,  in  tlie  extreme  sense  in  which. 
Bome  undertake  to  j) reach  it,  and  others  have 
said  that  they  have  felt  it,  is  impossible  to  his 
creatures  in  their  present  state  of  knowledge. 
They  who  tell  us  otherwise,  especially  when  they 
profess  to  know  it  from  experience,  either  speak 
untruly,  or  are  indulging  a  fond  conceit.    Child- 
ren who  have  scarcely  outgrown  infancy,  might 
as  well  pretend  such  a  love  for  the  father  who 
gives  them  pain  as  well  as  pleasure,  and  whose 
discipline,  however  wise,  it  is  therefore  impos- 
sible for  them  thoroughly  to  understand.     The 
children,  it  is  true,  discover,  as  they  grow  older, 
that  the  pain  is  good  for  them,  and  perhaps  that 
their  father  means  them  well  always ;  and  when 
theycome  to  be  fathers  themselves,  and  consi- 
der what  anxieties  he  underwent  for  their  wel- 
fare, how  he  may  have   lain  awake  to   secure 
them  rest,  and  how  his  heart  bled  when  he  pun- 
ished them,  their  love  for  him  becomes  entire, 
and  they  look  back  with  sorrow  for  having  doubt- 
ed him,  particularly  if  they  find  in  themselves 
weaknesses  that  formerly  diminished  their  rev- 
erence.    But  all  this  js  human,  not  divine ;  or 
only  so  far  divine,  inasmuch  as  divineness  can 


58  THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART. 

be  liumanly  partaken;  and  to  what  extent  is 
that?  How' far  does  it  enable  the  finite  child- 
ren of  the  infinite  Father  to  stretch  their  little 
arms  to  embrace  him  ?  to  think  of  him  as  Father 
alone  ?  to  be  sensible  of  him  only  on  the  side 
on  which  he  touches  humanity,  and  never  to  feel 
awed  at  the  whole  inconceivable  remainder  of 
his  invisible  and  interminable  presence  ?  How 
can  they  be  as  glad  at  what  he  takes  away  as 
at  what  he  gives  ?  at  his  awfulest  as  well  as  love- 
liest instruments  of  good  ?  how  repose  with  the 
same  child-like  joy  in  pestilence  and  earthquake, 
as  in  flowers  of  the  field,  or  as  the  infant  does 
on  the  bosom  of  its  mother  ? 

The  progress  of  the  best  and  wisest  in  the 
love  of  God  must  be  entirely  that  of  children  in 
the  love  of  their  mortal  father ;  till  having  ar- 
rived at  intellectual  man's  estate,  and  read  tho- 
roughly what  has  been  written  in  their  hearts, 
they  learn  to  love  him  so  well  in  what  they  know 
of  his  works,  as  to  be  prepared  to  know  and  to 
love  him  more  and  more,  in  new  stages  of  ex- 
istence. But  meantime,  in  the  present  state  of 
things,  however  beautiful  upon  the  whole,  and 
worthy  of  all  trust  and  endeavor,  human  beings 
are  creatures  too  weak  and  too  ignorant  to  be 
able  to  love  thoroughly  any  nature  but  such  as 
thoroughly  partakes  of  their  own ;  and  who  can 
do  this  so  well  as  the  God  that  ordained  it  ? 


THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    HEART.  59 

They  who  demand  in  this  respect  what  is  im- 
possible, only  tend  to  make  vanity  more  vain, 
and  to  drive  humility  and  love  itself  to  despair. 
Suppose  it  were  demanded  of  a  child  that  he 
should  love  his  father  with  a  perfect  love,  and 
this  on  peril  perhaps  of  incurring  his  hate  (for 
such  is  the  monstrosity,  murderous  of  its  own 
purpose,  which  has  been  too  often  threatened.) 
What  could  the  child  do,  short  of  taking  to  sul- 
lenness  in  self-defence,  but  be  filled  either  with 
hypocrisy  or  terror,  most  probably  both  ?  On 
the  other  hand,  perhaps  the  reader  is  himself  a 
father.  Did  he  never,  in  that  case,  look  at  his 
little  children,  as  they  sat  loving  and  caressing 
one  another,  and  think  how  content  he  was 
that  they  should  love  him  less,  till  they  could 
grow  old  enough  to  know  the  extent  of  his  af- 
fection 7  In  like  manner,  let  us  be  assured  that 
Grod  wills  us  to  love  one  another,  and  can  wait 
— who  so  well .? — till  our  affections  towards 
Himself  approach  those  of  higher  existences. 
Oh,  let  us  love  him  as  we  can,  and  admire  him 
as  we  must,  and  learn  even  in  this  world  more 
and  more  to  love  him  and  admire ;  but  let  us 
on  no  account  make  pretensions  which  he  must 
know  to  be  false,  and  which  he  has  not  ordained 
to  be  necessary. 

There  is  an  Eastern  apologue  to  this  purpose, 
which  o^oes  to  the  heart.     A  Mussulman,  famous 


60  THE   EELIGION   OF   THE   HEART. 

for  his  benevolence,  awoke  one  night,  and  be- 
held an  angel  in  his  room,  writing  in  a  golden 
book.  The  good  man,  emboldened  by  a  con- 
science of  peace,  ventured  to  ask  the  angel  what 
he  was  WTiting.  The  names,  answered  the  ce- 
lestial visitant,  of  those  who  love  God.  And  is 
mine  one  of  them  ?  said  Ben  Adhem  (for  that 
was  his  name.)  It  is  not,  replied  the  angel. — 
Ben  Adhem,  upon  this,  begged  that  his  name 
might  still  be  set  down,  as  one  that  loved  his 
fellow-creatures.  The  angel  set  it  down,  and 
disappeared. 

The  next  night  the  heavenly  messenger  re- 
turned, and  displaying  the  page  of  the  book,  on 
which  the  names  had  been  written,  Ben  Adhem 
found  that  his  own  name  had  been  put  at  the 
head  of  all  the  others. 


XX. 

OF  OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 

Other-Worldliness  is  the  piety  of  the  worldly. 
It  is  the  same  desire  for  the  advantages  of  the 
world  to  come,  which  the  worldly-minded  feel 
for  those  of  the  present :  and  it  is  manifested 
in  the  same  way. 

At  the  best  it  is  self-seeking,  without  thought 
of  others  ;  at  the  worst,  it  is  self-enjoyment  at 
their  expense. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART.      61 

The  other-worldly  are  known  by  the  dishonor 
which  they  do  the  Master  to  whose  favor  they 
aspire;  by  their  adulation  of  his  power,  their 
meanness  towards  the  poor,  and  their  insensi- 
bility to  the  cruelties  which  they  think  he  will 
wreak  on  those  who  offend  him. 

Yet  nine- tenths  of  the  pieties  that  exclusively 
pretend  to  the  name,  are  made  up  of  selfishness 
of  this  kind ;  and  their  professors  do  not  know  it ! 


XXI. 
OF  TEARS  AND  LAUGHTER. 

We  must  not  call  earth  a  vale  of  tears.  It 
is  neither  pious  to  do  so,  nor  in  any  respect  pro- 
per. We  might  as  well,  nay,  with  far  greater 
propriety,  call  it  a  field  of  laughter.  For  as 
there  is  more  good  than  evil  in  the  world,  more 
action  than  passion,  more  health  than  disease, 
more  life  than  death  (life  being  a  thing  of  years, 
but  death  of  moments),  so  there  is  more  com- 
fort than  discomfort,  more  pleasure  than  pain, 
and  therefore  more  laughter  than  tears. 

But  as  it  would  be  a  disrespect  to  sorrow  to 
call  earth  a  field  of  laughter,  so  it  is  a  sullenness 
to  joy,  and  an  ingratitude  to  the  goodness  of 
God,  to  call  it  a  vale  of  tears. 

God  made  both  tears  and  laughter,  and  both 


62  THE    RELIGION    OF    THE   HEART. 

for  kind  purposes.  For  as  laugliter  enables 
mirth  and  surprise  to  breathe  freely,  so  tears 
enable  sorrow  to  vent  itself  patiently.  Tears 
hinder  sorrow  from  becoming  despair  and  mad- 
ness ;  and  laughter  is  one  of  the  very  privileges 
of  reason,  being  confined  to  the  human  species. 
It  becomes  us,  therefore,  to  receive  both  the 
gifts  thankfully,  and  to  hold  ourselves,  on  fit- 
ting occasions,  superior  to  neither.  To  be  in- 
capable of  tears,  would  be  to  lose  some  of  the 
sweetest  emotions  of  humanity  ;  and  the  proud 
or  sullen  fool  who  should  never  laugh,  would 
but  reduce  himself  below  it. 


XXII. 
OF  CONSCIENCE. 

If  we  are  conscious  of  having  done  wrong,  or 
of  doing  it,  we  must  refrain  instantly,  and  set 
about  making  amends.  All  other  modes  of  re- 
pentance, unattended  by  these  proofs  of  it,  (ex- 
cept in  case  of  impossibility,  of  which  more 
anon,)  are  but  so  much  culpable  weakness  or 
vice  ;  pity  for  ourselves  not  others  ;  regrets 
that  we  cannot  be  selfish  towards  others  with- 
out some  degree  of  concern  for  the  consequences ; 
tributes  of  self-indulgence  to  bad  habits  of  body 
or  mind. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART.      63 

Should  the  habit  be  such  as  to  render  the 
sudden  and  entire  abandonment  of  it  dangerous 
' — as  in  the  case  of  certain  stages  of  drinking 
(for  the  analogy,  which  is  adduced  on  such  oc- 
casionSj  of  the  man  rescued  from  drowning,  is 
not  a  fair  one,  habit  being  a  second  nature,  and 
the  drunkard  having  accustomed  himself  to  the 
element  in  which  he  lives,)  the  vicious  person 
is  not  the  less  under  the  obligation  of  instant 
amendment,  but  he  is  warranted  in  bringing  it 
about  by  degrees,  and  those  even  small  and  slow 
ones,  provided  he  persevere.  Suffering,  whether 
of  mind  or  body,  must  in  that  case  be  borne  ; — 
first,  as  a  necessity  for  the  ultimate  production 
of  non-suffering  ;  secondly,  as  a  help  to  'self-re- 
spect and  resolution,  every  borne  suffering  being 
a  new  layer  for  the  consolidation  of  patience  ; 
thirdly,  as  a  proof  of  repentance,  and  a  return 
for  the  sympathies  and  anxieties  of  friends. 

In  this,  and  all  other  cases,  if  we  cannot  make 
thorough  amends,  or  amends  in  the  best  direc- 
tion, that  is  to  say,  to  those  whom  we  have 
most  directly  injured,  we  must  make  them  to 
the  best  of  our  ability,  and  do  proportionate 
good  (as  far  as  it  can  be  calculated)  elsewhere. 
The  best  way  is  to  do  double  good,  or  what  we 
may  hope  to  be  such. 

But  we  must  not  reckon  upon  repenting  or 
leaking   amends   beforehand  ;  for  wrong   is  in 


64      THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

proportion  to  its  deliberateness,  and  such  pro- 
spective repentance  is  therefore  a  great  aggra- 
vation of  it.  Those  religions^  which  by  en- 
couraging a  tendency  to  such  calculations  turn 
absolutions  into  allurements,  can  only  be  ex- 
cused on  the  ground  of  their  wishing  to  make 
the  best  of  what  they  cannot  mend  ;  but  in 
truth,  as  far  as  habit  is  concerned,  they  make 
the  worst ;  and  thus,  by  an  unhappy  kind  of 
justice,  become  bound  to  pardon  what  they  con- 
tribute to  cause. 

But  conscience,  it  will  be  argued,  may  itself 
be  in  the  wrong  :  we  may  not  always  condemn 
ourselves  justly  ; — no,  not  even  when  we  most 
think  we  do. 

The  remark  is  just.  Conscience  may  be  in 
the  wrong.  It  may  be  over-scrupulous  as  well 
as  too  little  so  ;  may  have  been  wrongly  trained ; 
may  have  been  taught,  not  only  to  take  right 
for  wrong,  but  wrong  itself  for  right.  Hence 
ascetics  and  other  bigots.  Hence  persecutors  ; 
inquisitors  ;  refusers  of  the  rights  of  conscience 
to  others  ;  fallible  creatures  claiming  privileges 
of  infallibility,  though  they  have  no  greater 
faculties  wherewith  to  be  capable  of  the  endow- 
ment. 

If  your  conscience,  then,  is  in  doubt,  consider 
what  you  would  have  thought  of  the  case  had 
it  been  another's,  before  it  was  vonr  own. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART.      65 

If  still  in  doubt,  take  your  perplexity  to  tlie 
friend  whose  principles  you  most  respect. 

If  he  cannot  solve  it,  and  if  it  includes  noth- 
ing which  you  could  not  state  to  the  hearts  of 
the  whole  world,  take  it  to  God  in  prayer,  and 
abide  by  the  feeling  which  results. 

But  perhaps  your  conscience  is  one  which  is 
not  liable  to  perplexity  ?  Construe  the  doubt 
then,  without  further  ado,  against  yourself. 

Perhaps,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  conscience 
too  easily  affected  ;  a  conscience  so  anxious  and 
full  of  others,  that  it  does  not  leave  itself  room 
enough  for  claims  of  its  own.  Its  friends  tell  it 
so,  whatever  it  may  say  to  the  contrary.  In 
that  case,  it  is  its  duty  to  accept  the  first  relief 
which  the  respected  friend  offers. 

But  be  careful  never  to  perplex  it  again.  It 
is  true,  the  tenderer  the  conscience  the  braver 
it  can  be  ;  but  only  on  the  side  of  right ;  only 
in  the  performance  of  what  it  thinks  just  and 
kind.  It  does  but  the  more  strongly  feel  every 
deviation  and  every  neglect ;  every  point,  not 
only  of  wrong  which  it  has  done,  but  of  right 
which  it  has  omitted  to  do.  Let  it  lose  there- 
fore, above  all,  nothing  of  its  bravery.  Let  it 
dare  everything,  rather  than  shrink  from  a  pain 
which  it  becomes  it  to  meet,  and  which  may 
save  pain  to  another  ;  for  one  omission  will  out- 
weigh with  it  a  thousand  performances.  Not  that 


66  THE   RELIGION    OF    THE   HEART. 

it  ought  to  do  so  ;  but  it  will ;  till  the  con- 
science itself  grow  stronger. 

And  here  let  it  be  noted,  that  it  is  the  duty 
of  conscience  itself,  as  well  as  of  those  who  train 
it,  to  render  it,  as  far  as  is  compatible,  both 
tender  and  strong  ;  both  sensitive  and  self-pos- 
sessed, considerate  to  others,  and  at  the  same 
time  not  unjust  to  itself ;  in  one  word,  healthy. 
But  as  long  as  tenderness  predominates,  again 
must  it  be  told  to — Beware.  Let  it  especially 
beware  of  two  things  ;  of  impulse,  to  which  it 
has  a  natural  liability  ;  and  of  presumption,  to 
which,  though  a  weakness,  it  is  fortunately  not 
inclined.  For  presumption  is  a  defect  on  the 
side  of  modesty  or  self-knowledge.  It  is  mea- 
surement of  ability  by  assumptions  of  the  will ; 
and  if  this  is  a  weakness  on  the  part  of  strength 
itself,  what  must  it  be  on  that  of  a  want  of 
strength  ? 

In  all  frailties  of  mind,  we  must  endeavor  to 
strengthen  the  body.  In  all  frailties  of  body, 
we  must  endeavor  to  strengthen  the  mind.  In 
most  cases,  a  physician  will  be  found  the  best 
adviser  for  both.  But  he  should  be  a  physician 
of  the  first  order,  qualified  both  to  instruct  and 
to  win  ;  to  alarm,  to  comfort,  and  advise  the 
very  best.  For  conscience  has  to  do  both  with 
great  and  small  duties  ;  and  according  to  its 
sensitiveness  or  dullness,  it  may  be  mistaken  in 


THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  67 

its  conclusions  on  both.  One  man  may  feel  as 
much  for  an  offence  as  another  for  a  sin  ;  a  crime 
may  drive  the  first  to  despair  ;  and  a  third  may 
need  but  some  better  knowledge  to  waken  him 
to  a  reasonable  degree  of  regret  and  amendment.'-' 
The  greatest  perplexities  of  conscience,  as  far 
as  the  logic  of  it  is  concerned,  are  occasioned  by 
duties  in  a  state  of  conflict.  It  has  been  asked, 
for  instance,  by  way  of  putting  an  extreme  case 
for  the  purpose  of  illustration,  whether  a  fugi- 
tive in  peril  of  his  life,  apart  from  the  question 
of  guilt  or  innocence,  may  be  screened  from  his 
pursuers  by  a  falsehood.  It  has  also  been  ask- 
ed, whether  in  dangerous  cases  of  illness,  untrue 
answers  may  be  given  to  the  sufferers,  for  fear 
of  increasing  the  danger.     Perhaps   the   com- 


*  offence  is  a  blow  given  to  propriety  of  any  kind,  great 
or  small.  Immorality  is  conduct  offensive  to  virtuous  cus- 
tom, or  received  moral  opinion.  Vice  is  bad  habit, — habit 
which  ought  to  be  shunned,  as  injurious  to  mind  or  body. — 
Sin  is  the  violation  of  ordinance  in  deed  or  thought,  con- 
sidered in  the  religious  point  of  view.  Crime  is  the  greatest 
practical  violation  of  ordinance,  whether  divine  or  human. 
There  is  no  final  distinction,  however,  of  divine  from  human 
ordinance,  all  human  .ordinance  being  good  only  inasmuch 
as  it  is  divine  ;  that  is  to  say,  inasmuch  as  it  accords  with 
those  first  principles  of  right  and  just,  which  are  found  to 
be  written  on  all  hearts,  in  proportion  as  men  rid  themselvea 
of  unsocial  prejudices,  and  learn  to  know  one  another  in  a 
manner  worthy  of  creatures  of  God. 


68  THE   EELIGION    OF    THE    HEART. 

monest  of  all  these  perplexities  is  that  of  per- 
sons engaged  in  traffic,  when  they  are  men  of 
veracity  out  of  the  pale  of  shop  or  office,  and 
would  gladly  speak  the  truth  at  all  times,  but 
think  it  impossible  in  justice  to  themselves  and 
families. 

You  must  speak  the  truth,  says  one  moralist, 
even  at  the  expense  of  kindness.  What  signi- 
fies money  or  life  itself,  in  the  case  of  the  indi- 
vidual, compared  with  injury  done  to  a  principle 
which  is  the  only  security  of  good  to  all  ? 

Be  kind,  says  another  moralist,  even  at  the 
expense  of  truth,  when  the  perplexity  between 
the  two  duties  is  pressing,  and  not  to  be  solved. 
Why  sacrifice  a  good,  obvious,  and  such  as  you 
would  long  for,  were  the  case  your  own,  to  ano- 
ther which  at  the  best  is  far  off",  and  which  pro- 
bably does  not  even  exist  ? 

Now  in  such  extreme  cases  as  those  of  the 
fugitive  and  the  sick  bed,  the  universal  Heart 
of  mankind  must  be  the  judge.  The  man  who 
from  his  alleged  love  of  truth  should  sacrifice  a 
fugitive  to  the  sword,  or  a  patient  to  the  terrors 
'of  a  nervous  fever,  would  assuredly,  from  pole 
to  pole,  be  held  to  be  nothing  but  a  cruel  bigot. 
The  human  race  would  not  give  credit  to  his 
love  of  truth  ;  and  therefore  the  interests  of 
truth  itself  would  be  hurt  instead  of  maintained, 
and  men  be  tempted  on  less  occasions  to  think 


THE   RELIGION    OF   THE   HEART.  69 

it  a  pedantry  and  a  pretence.  It  becomes  a 
Keligion  of  the  Heart  to  proclaim  such  cases 
exceptional  and  privileged  ;  for  thus  humanity 
is  assured,  and  as  little  harm  done  to  the  oppos- 
ing duty  as  possible. 

The  case,  however,  is  diiferent  with  the  per- 
son engaged  in  traffic  ;  for  though  it  may  cost 
him  many  a  delay,  many  an  impatience,  many  a 
sickness  of  heart,  many  a  sore  trial  even  of  those 
he  loves,  yet,  to  say  nothing  of  nobler  arid  less 
interested  sides  of  duty,  it  has  been  proved  by 
facts  as  well  as  arguments,  that  the  good  old 
proverb  is  true,  and  that  Honesty  is  really  the 
Best  Policy.  Thoroughly  honest  dealing  and 
triumphant  profit  have  been  proved  to  be  com- 
patible by  the  experience  of  some  Christian 
sects,  such  as  the  Quakers  and  Moravians  ;  and 
of  all  the  traders  of  the  East,  none  are  so  hon- 
est, so  rich,  or  so  respected,  as  the  Parsees, — a 
remnant  of  the  ancient  Fire-worshippers,  who 
believed  God  to  be  present  in  the  sun. 

But  the  trafficker  may  answer,  that  he  has  no 
faith  in  these  stories  of  Quakers  and  others,  es- 
pecially after  what  has  been  seen  of  individuals 
among  them. 

To  which  it  is  to  be  replied,  that  individuals 
prove  or  disprove  nothing  corporate,  and  that 
bad  children  may  be  found  in  families  the  most 
estimable.     The   Quakers   and   others,   among 


70  THE  EELIGION   OF   THE   HEAET. 

beautiful  opinions,  hold  some  which  are  far  dif- 
ferent ;  but  inasmuch  as  they  make  a  religious 
duty  of  veracity,  there  is  no  beautiful  religion 
conceivable,  to  which  they  do  not  belong. 

The  duty,  then,  of  the  trafficker, — that  is  to 
say,  of  the  shop-keeper,  the  merchant,  the  bro- 
ker, the  land-owner,  or  whatever  denomination 
of  buyer  or  seller  may  describe  him, — is  clear. 
He  is  bound,  at  the  very  least,  to  make  enquiry 
into  the  state  of  this  question  between  the  pro- 
verb and  its  impugners.  If  he  has  any  con- 
science, he  has  no  alternative  between  so  doing 
and  remaining  self-dissatisfied.  Should  he  bo 
discerning  as  well  as  candid  enough  to  discover 
the  identity  of  the  true  and  the  profitable,  his 
pains  will  turn  from  ignoble  to  noble  ones,  and 
his  ultimate  pleasures  will  be  unpolluted. — 
Should  he  remain  unconvinced,  he  must  count 
on  being  always  uneasy  in  proportion  to  the 
amount  of  his  conscience,  and  on  losing  the 
pleasures  of  goodness,  and  of  the  belief  in  good- 
ness, in  proportion  as  he  unhappily  succeeds  in 
diminishing  it.  As  to  those  simply  conven- 
tional persons,  on  another  wrong  side  of  com- 
mon-place, who,  from  dullness  of  nature,  com- 
bined with  bad  training  and  example,  commence 
business  with  no  thought  on  the  matter  but  to 
avail  themselves  of  the  usual  tricks  of  trade  and 
the  show  of  respectability,  they  must  be  allowed 


THE   KELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  71 

their  excuses,  and  not  grudged  their  comforts, 
till  the  many,  whose  customs  have  misled  them, 
can  be  taught  better.  Times  of  transition  and 
of  abundant^ work  may  require  such  laborers  ; 
and  the  servants  of  intellectual  and  moral  ad- 
vancement must  neither  be  irritated  at  the  delay 
of  their  adhesion,  nor  despair  of  its  turning  to  the 
very  greatest  account,  when  custom  shall  have 
grown  wiser.  For  these  are  but  the  dullest 
children  of  humanity,  not  destitute  of  a  strong 
social  propensity,  as  may  be  seen  by  their  very 
slavery  to  example  ;  and  as  those  who  follow  a 
multitude  to  do  evil,  do  it  out  of  some  imagin- 
ary notion  of  good,  so  these  will  no  less  follow 
the  multitude  to  do  good,  when  good  shall  have 
become  the  general  attraction.  Custom,  appa- 
rently the  most  unpromising  of  all  things,  be- 
comes, if  we  reflect  upon  it,  the  most  hopeful  ; 
for  if  mankind,  by  the  mere  force  of  it,  can  be 
wedded  to  the  falsest  notions  of  prosperity,  how 
fast  w^ill  not  the  tie  be  found,  when  they  are 
wedded  to  the  true  ? 

There  are  two  things, — a  first  thing  and  a 
last, — which  are  to  be  said  respecting  conscience 
to  the  whole  world. 

To  those  who  think  themselves  most  inno- 
cqjit, — Never  be  proud  ;  for  you  may  not  have 
undergone  your  worst  temptation,  and  if  you 
have,  the  pride  of  it  will  be  a  sin. 


72  THE    RELIGION    OF   THE    HEART. 

To  those  who  think  themselves  most  guilty, 
— Never  despair  ;  for  despair  does  not  befit  the 
creatures  of  a  good  Maker ;  and  if  you  have 
suffered  remorse,  and  have  surely  repented,  and 
have  begun  making  what  amends  are  in  your 
power,  God,  speaking  through  the  hearts  of 
your  brethren,  his  other  children,  bids  you  say 
to  him,  "  Thou,  0  Father,  wilt  not  suffer  to  be 
ever  miserable,  one  whom  thou  hast  thought  fit 
to  create." 


XXIII. 
OF     WAR. 

The  best  way  to  consider  war,  is  to  look  upon 
it  as  having  been  a  necessity  up  to  a  certain 
point,  and  as  beginning  to  be  otherwise  when 
the  necessity  becomes  a  doubt.  The  assump- 
tion that  it  can  never  be  abolished,  is  not  only 
a  presumption  from  a  brief  joast  to  an  intermi- 
nable future,  but  every  barbarous  age  might 
have  said  as  much  for  evils  which  its  posterity 
has  seen  abolished.  Nakedness  has  gone  out 
with  civilization  ;  cannibalism  has  gone  out  ; 
the  torturing  of  prisoners  taken  in  battle  has 
gone  out  ;  yet  what  Cherokee  Indian,  wlmt 
New  Zealander,  what  ancient  Briton,  would  at 
one    time   have   thought   it   possible  .^      They 


THE   RELIGION    OF   THE   HEART.  73 

would  have  referred  to  customs,  to  wants,  to 
passions,  to  "  human  nature  ;"  yet,  notwith- 
standing these  opponents,  mankind  have  dressed 
themselves  and  become  humaner. 

All  opinions  die  hard  ;  and  it  is  as  well  that 
they  do ;  otherwise  change  might  come  too 
lightly,  and  the  best  sentiments  might  perish. 
Let  us  be  content,  therefore,  to  see  good  opin- 
ions of  slow  growth,  and  promising  for  dura- 
tion. 

The  Heart  bids  us  believe  every  evil  remova- 
ble, the  absence  of  which  is  not  incompatible 
with  the  conditions  of  life  itself,  and  with  the 
progress  of  social  intercourse. 

As  there  is  no  evil,  therefore,  which  more  af- 
flicts the  heart  than  War,  it  becomes  our  duty, 
if  we  have  not  already  done  so,  to  look  closely 
into  its  miseries,  which  is  a  task,  that  its  de- 
fenders in  general  neither  will,  nor  dare  perform. 
The  inspection  will  be  sufficient,  to  show  us 
what  we  have  then  to  do. 


XXIV. 
OF  TELESCOPE  AND  MICROSCOPE. 

Be  not  dismayed  at  the  revelations  of  tele- 
scope or  microscope  :  for  magnitude  implies 
nothing  hostile^  and  death  has  the  same  recon- 


74  THE    RELIGION   OF    THE    HEART. 

cilements  in  least  as  in  greatest.  You  yourself 
are  an  immeasurable  giant^  a  spectacle  for  a 
telescope,  compared  with  creatures,  myriads  of 
whose  shells  go  to  make  up  a  particle  of  slate  ; 
and  you  yourself,  harmless  as  you  otherwise 
may  be,  and  benevolent  as  you  know  yourself 
to  be,  are  the  cause  of  the  deaths  of  innocent 
creatures  in  stream  and  meadow,  in  vegetables, 
and  in  the  air,  who  pass  healthy,  and  therefore, 
it  is  to  be  presumed,  happy  lives,  and  whose 
deaths  are  brief 

In  the  present  state  of  things,  without  death 
life  could  not  be  renovated,  and  hope  of  still 
better  life  could  not  exist.  Let  us  prepare  our- 
selves by  thinking  and  doing  our  best  in  this 
life,  to  enter  worthily  on  the  noblest  possibili- 
ties of  another.. 


XXV. 
OF  SPIRITS  AND  THE  INVISIBLE  WORLD. 
Be  on  your  guard  against  those  who,  because 
science  and  experiment  are  admirable  things, 
and  appear  to  be  the  only  means  of  ascertaining 
material  truths,  would  fain  do  injustice  to  sci- 
ence itself,  and  conclude  that  nothing  can  exist 
which  is  not  provable  by  the  senses.  Percep- 
tion is  a  mystery  explainable  by  no  modes  of 
sensation.     Science  itself  has  discovered  that 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART.      75 

there  are  things  which  we  cannot  see  ;  which 
we  know  only  in  combination.  Analogy  opens 
to  us  an  endless  world.  We  reasonably  con- 
clude that  one  planet  is  inhabited  as  well  as 
another.  We  know  that  every  part  of  the 
world  we  live  in,  is  animated  by  other  living 
beings.  Are  we  to  assert  that  fields  of  space 
are  not  as  well  filled  ?  or  that  there  are  not 
modes  of  existence,  even  round  about  us,  im- 
perceptible to  our  species  of  eye-sight  ? 

Surely  love,  and  hope,  and  joy,  and  endeavor, 
and  imagination  are  not  confined  to  us  and 
to  what  resembles  us.  Surely  there  are  my- 
riads of  beings  elsewhere  inhabiting  their  re- 
spective spheres,  both  visible  and  invisible,  all 
perhaps  inspired  with  the  same  task  of  trying 
how  far  they  can  extend  happiness.  Some  may 
have  realized  their  heaven,  and  are  resting. 
Some  may  be  carrying  it  farther.  Some  may 
be  helping  ourselves,  just  as  we  help  the  bee,  or 
the  wounded  bird ;  spirits  perhaps  of  dear 
friends,  who  still  pity  our  tears,  who  rejoice  in 
our  smiles,  and  whisper  into  our  hearts  a  belief 
that  they  are  present. 

The  heart  bids  us  believe  it  possible  ;  and 
Oh  !  whatever  good  thing  the  heart  bids  us  be- 
lieve, let  us  do  our  best  to  believe  it ;  for  God 
has  put  it  there  ;  and  its  goodness  is  his  war- 
rant for  its  being  cherished. 


76  THE   KELIGION   OF   THE   HEAKT. 

He  that  does  not  make  use  of  imagination 
and  affection  to  help  him  to  these  thoughts,  is 
as  limited  in  the  amount  of  his  faculties,  and 
perhaps  as  deficient  in  the  appreciation  of  the 
very  instruments  of  philosophy,  as  the  bigot 
who  sees  no  good  in  the  progress  of  science,  or 
in  the  refutation  which  it  gives  to  assumptions. 

Be  it  the  ambition  of  those  who  know  better, 
to  improve  and  exalt  their  condition,  by  the 
exercise  of  every  faculty  :  and  may  all  the  be- 
ings, visible  or  invisible,  who  would  extend  the 
dominion  of  heaven,  be  conscious  of  the  com- 
panions they  have  in  their  task.  • 


XXVI. 
OF  RELIGION, 

Keligion  (religio — religare,  to  rebind)  is  the 
rebinding  of  conscience,  with  a  belief  in  its  di- 
vine origin. 

Religion  is  as  natural  to  man  as  his  sight  of 
the  stars,  and  his  sense  of  a  power  greater  than 
his  own. 

But  systems  of  religion  vary  with  successive 
generations  ;  and  though  it  becomes  all  men  to 
entertain  a  certain  reverence  for  the  past,  and 
to  regard  its  sufferings,  and  perhaps  its  mistakes, 
as  having  been  good  for  the  future,  yet  it  is  not 
in  the  nature  of  the  feelings  which  God  has 


THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  77 

given  us,  that  any  good  heart,  in  proportion  as 
it  reflects  on  the  subject,  should  be  content  with 
any  system  of  religion  inferior  to  its  notions  of 
what  is  best. 

With  no  religion  at  all,  men  are  in  danger 
of  falling  into  a  mechanical  dullness,  or  into 
preposterous  self- worship,  or  into  heart-harden- 
ing abandonment  to  the  senses. 

With  a  religion  that  is  unworthy  of  them, 
they  make  God  himself  unworthy,  and  fill  their 
belief  with  cruelty  and  melancholy,  with  dispute 
and  scandal. 

With  a  religion  satisfactory  to  the  heart,  men 
love  and  do  honor  to  God,  make  brothers  of 
their  fellow-creatures,  are  animated  in  their  en- 
deavors, comforted  in  their  sufferings,  and  en- 
couraged to  hope  everything  from  the  future. 

Religion  is  reverence  without  terror,  and  hu- 
mility without  meanness.  It  is  a  sense  of  the 
unknown  world,  without  disparagement  to  the 
known  ;  an  admiration  of  the  material  beau- 
ties of  the  universe,  without  forgetfulness  of  the 
spiritual ;  an  enhancement  in  both  instances,  of 
each  by  each. 

Religion  doubles  every  sense  of  duty,  great 
and  small ;  from  that  to  the  whole  human  race, 
down  to  manners  towards  individuals,  and  even 
to  appearance  in  ourselves ;  from  purity  of 
heart  to  cleanliness  of  person. 


78      THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

But  it  does  all  without  gloom  or  oppressive- 
ness. It  does  not  desire  us  to  reflect  in  any 
painful  manner  or  to  any  painful  extent,  unless 
some  necessity  for  the  good  of  others  demands 
it ;  and  then  it  would  terminate  the  pain  with 
the  necessity. 

The  very  uncertainties  of  a  right  religion  are 
diviner  than  the  supposed  certainties  of  a  wrong 
one  ;  for  its  hopes  for  all  are  unmixed  with  ter- 
rible beliefs  for  any. 

Keligion,  earthwards,  begins  with  reverence 
to  offspring  before  they  are  born  :  and  heaven- 
wards, it  sees  no  more  end  to  its  hopes  than  to 
the  number  of  the  stars. 


XXVII. 
AGAINST  SUPERSTITION  AND  INTOLERANCE. 

Never  think  it  necessary  to  the  belief  in  a 
God,  to  retain  all  the  attributes  given  him  by 
less  informed  ages,  to  whose  cruder  states  of  in- 
tellect such  opinions  perhaps  were  not  without 
their  use.  So  at  least  let  us  hope,  in  our  igno- 
rance of  a  better  reason,  and  in  our  right,  per- 
haps in  our  duty,  to  surmise  the  best.  The 
whole  past  may  have  been  necessary  to  the  fu- 
ture, but  the  highest  state  of  our  reason  must 
modify  the  present. 


THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  79 

"  I  would  rather  men  should  say/'  says  the 
devout  heathen,  "  that  there  was  no  such  man 
as  Plutarch,  than  that  there  was  one  Plutarch 
who  ate  his  children  as  soon  as  they  were  born." 

And  he  was  right,  says  the  philosopher  ;  "for 
atheism  is  but  disbelief,  but  superstition  is  con- 
tumely." 

Let  us  see,  nevertheless,  that  we  endeavor 
calmly  and  charitably  to  do  away  superstition 
itself ;  otherwise  our  impatience  of  wrong  will 
make  us  impatient,  and  wrong  ourselves  ;  for 
(in  another  view  of  the  matte  r)  what  are  the 
most  inhuman  threats  held  out  against  differ- 
ence in  opinion,  but  the  consequences  of  error, 
of  impatience  in  argument, — and  such  as  no 
human  being,  whatever  he  ma/  suppose,  would 
endure  to  see  executed  ?  The  threateners  say, 
that  they  feel  for  all,  and  therefore  denounce 
many.  Too  many,  indeed,  do  they  denounce, 
and  quite  irreconcilably  to  their  feeling  for  all. 
Let  us,  because  we  feel  for  all,  denounce  no  one : 
for  rather  ought  heaven  and  earth  to  pass  away, 
than  one  Single  being  suffer  eternal  misery. — 
God  bids  the  Heart  think  so,  whatever  may  be 
argued  from  false  assumptions  by  the  sophistries 
of  the  brain. 

Let  us  not  stand  a  chance  of  hurting  the 
most  tender  and  innocent  mines  in  a  passionate 
hope,  and  by  an  irrational  and  feeble  mode,  of 


80  THE   KELIGIQN    OF    THE   HEART. 

restraining  tlie  worst.  Let  us  not  become  in- 
jured ourselves,  and  throw  a  darkness  over  life, 
by  shadows  of  our  own  creation.  The  Deity 
that  we  serve,  can  afford  to  bear  contumely  as 
well  as  unbelief.  Shall  we  conduct  ourselves  as 
if  he  could  not,  or  attempt  to  convince  mankind 
by  the  least  thing  unbefitting  so  true  a  dignity  ? 
"What  man,  or  set  of  men,  could  long  continue 
to  think  erroneously  of  pure  beneficence  ? 

0  Calvin,  thou  who  couldst  not  bear  in  ano- 
ther the  right  thou  assumedst  thyself !  0  Ter- 
tuUian,  who  didst  vainly  fancy  thou  couldst  be- 
hold with  pleasure,  hellish  pangs  and  monstrous 
absurdities  not  to  be  spoken  of ; — ^let  your  spir- 
its become  reconciled  to  themselves,  for,  behold ! 
the  only  real  part  of  your  hell  is  passing  away, 
— the  belief  of  it  in  the  minds  of  men.  There 
are  sorrows  for  the  best,  because  we  are  mortal. 
There  are  pains  for  the  worst,  because  it  is  the 
nature  of  their  mistakes  to  produce  them.  But 
the  sorrows  of  the  good  have  their  relief ;  and 
the  pains  of  the  worst  have  their  termination  ; 
for  goodness  looks  not  to  the  punishment,  but 
to  the  end  of  it. 

Let  not,  therefore,  the  evil  despair,  and  re- 
main edl,  as  men  having  no  hope  ;  neither  let 
them  have  a  hope  founded  on  the  despair  of 
others,  which  is  no  good  and  fit  hope,  nor  such 


THE  BELIGION  OF  THE  HEABT.      81 

as  can  endure.     But  let  them  have  a  real  hope, 
and  be  reconciled,  and  know  their  profit. 


HOUSEHOLD  MEMORANDUM. 

It  is  our  daily  duty  to  consider,  that  in  all 
circumstances  of  life,  pleasurable,  painful,  or 
otherwise,  the  conduct  of  every  human  being 
affects,  more  or  less,  the  happiness  of  others, 
especially  of  those  in  the  same  house  ;  and  that 
as  life  is  made  up,  for  the  most  part,  not  of 
great  occasions,  but  of  small  every-day  moments, 
it  is  the  giving  to  those  moments  the  greatest 
amount  of  peace,  pleasantness,  and  security, 
that  contributes  most  to  the  sum  of  human 


Be  peaceable.     Be  cheerful.     Be  true. 


XXIX. 

OF  THE  GREAT  BENEFACTORS  OF  THE  WORLD. 

Let  US  be  grateful,  without  idolatry,  without 
worship  of  any  sort,  to  the  memories  of  those 
divine  men  who  from  time  to  time  have  ad- 
vanced the  human  species  in  knowledge  and 


82  THE  RELIGION   OF   THE  HEART. 

goodness.  They  partook  of  our  infirmities  ;  but 
the  divine  particle  was  stronger  within  them  ; 
they  may  have  been  misrepresented  in  some  in- 
stances by  their  followers  ;  their  history  may 
have  been  mingled  with  unworthy  fables  ;  they 
themselves^  the  best  of  them,  from  excessive 
sensibility,  and  their  very  impatience  with  what 
was  wrong,  may  have  failed  in  becoming  pat- 
terns of  humanity.  But  it  is  our  duty  to  sepa- 
rate what  is  good  and  likely  in  their  history, 
from  that  which  is  of  doubtful  character.  They 
who  loved  us,  and  we  who  love  and  honor  them, 
have  equally  a  right  to  the  benefit  of  the  sepa- 
ration. 

Let  us  reverence  and  love  all  who  have  acted 
or  suffered  in  the  great  cause  of  beneficence. 

Let  us  reverence  the  bright  names  in  dark 
periods,  the  remote  philosophers  of  Europe  and 
Asia ;  Confucius  in  particular,  the  first  great 
light  of  rational  piety  and  benignant  intercourse. 

Let  us  reverence  our  latest  benefactors,  the 
exposers  of  intolerance,  the  overthrowers  of 
cruel  substitutions  of  force  for  argument,  the 
furtherers  of  the  love  of  reason. 

Let  us  reverence  the  great  teachers  of  experi- 
ment, the  liberators  of  the  hands  of  knowledge  ; 
and  their  disciples,  the  movers  of  the  earth. 

Let  us  reverence  and  love  those  extraordinary 
men  of  action,  the  Alfreds,  Epaminondases  and 


THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    HEART.  83 

their  like,  who  have  been  busiest  in  the  thick  of 
the  world,  and  yet  it  polluted  them  not ;  thus 
enabling  us,  for  ever,  to  refute  the  sophistries  of 
the  worldly. 

Let  us  reverence  and  love  Socrates,  who  next 
to  the  great  philosoj^her  of  China  shewed  the 
way  to  this  union  of  the  active  and  contempla- 
tive ;  who  was  the  first  among  Europeans  to 
teach  us,  that  philosophy  does  not  require  lofty 
occasions  on  which  to  exert  itself,  but  may  be- 
come a  part  of  the  daily  business  of  life. 

Let  us  reverence  and  love  Epictetus  and  An- 
toninus, who,  though  the  one  was  a  slave  and 
the  other  an  emperor,  alike  told  us  to  bear  and 
forbear ;  being  self-denying  to  themselves,  and 
indulgent  to  others  ;  and  teaching  beneficence, 
not  only  towards  friends,  and  men  in  general, 
but  towards  enemies  and  those  who  ill  treat  us. 
Let  us  reverence  and  love  above  all,  their 
martyred  brother  Jesus  ;  not  because  he  was  in 
all  respects  their  superior,  or  to  be  looked  upon, 
as  that  "  perfect  man,'^  which,  with  an  injurious 
want  of  sincerity,  he  has  been  pronounced  ;  for 
his  temperament  was  less  under  his  control,  and 
sometimes  contradicted  his  doctrines  ;  but  be- 
cause he  was  the  man  who  fel  t  most  for  the 
wants  of  his  fellow-creatures,  and  who  saw  deep- 
est into  their  remedy  ;  the  man  fullest  of  love 
for  the  loving,  of  forgiveness  for  the  ignorant. 


84      THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

of  pity  for  the  unfortunate  and  the  outcast ;  the 
identifier  of  one's  neighbor  with  every  human 
being  ;  the  freer  of  spirit  from  letter  ;  the  pro- 
claimer  of  the  rights  of  the  poor.  May  he 
never  be  deprived  of  the  love  and  honor  that 
are  his  due,  by  having  had  the  claims  for  them 
stretched  beyond  the  limits  of  conscience  and 
common  sense.* 

We  should  consider  it  incumbent  upon  us, 
that  no  evil  endured  for  the  sake  of  mankind 
by  any  such  men  as  these,  at  any  time,  or  in 
any  country,  should  lose  its  good  effects,  as  far 


*  It  is  very  painful  to  us  to  write  the  objecting  portions  of 
this  paragraph,  even  if  for  no  other  reason  than  the  fear  lest 
they  may  wound  the  feelings  of  chance  readers,  who  have 
been  brought  up  without  a  misgiving  on  the  subject.  Others 
who  are  acquainted  with  the  New  Testament,  and  who  have 
exercised  any  judgment  upon  it  at  all,  will  instantly  (and 
how  much  does  that  say  1)  guess  the  kind  of  passages  in  the 
life  of  Jesus,  to  which  we  allude,— occasions  on  which  he 
speaks  with  a  vituperation  not  according  to  meekness,  and 
on  which  he  acts  with  an  inconsistency,  and  even  a  practical 
violence,  wholly  opposed  to  it.  The  spirit  at  heart,  no  doubt, 
was  still  the  same  ;  but  the  flesh  was  weak.  There  are,  it  is 
true,  self-evident  fables  recorded  of  him,  and  he  has  a  right 
to  be  relieved  of  their  responsibility.  Yet  the  injury  thus 
done  to  the  probability  of  his  history  in  general  is  obvious  ; 
and  if  more  is  to  be  admitted,  where  is  the  authenticity  to 
begin  7  or  to  what  is  it  to  be  confined  1 — See  what  Francis 
William  Newman  has  said  on  the  subject  of  "perfection,"  in 
his  admirable  book,  entitled  "Phases  of  Faith,',  p.  208,  &c. 


THE    RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  85 

as  our  efforts  can  realize  them.  For  us,  Con- 
fucius himself  should  not  have  suffered  calumny 
in  vain ;  nor  Socrates  in  vain  have  drunk  his 
poison  ;  nor  the  thorns  of  the  loving  Jesus  fail 
to  produce  flowers. 

But  faith  in  their  names  without  imitation 
of  their  virtues,  is  nothing  ;  often  worse  than 
nothing  ;  for  it  enables  men  who  are  unlike 
them,  to  lord  it  over  those  who  do  better. 

Names,  the  very  greatest,  are  nothing.  Na- 
tures and  duties  are  all. 


XXX. 

OF   THE   GREAT  MEANS  AND  ENDS  OF  ENDEAVOR. 

The  great  means  and  ends  of  all  Social  En- 
deavor are  these  : — 

The  Means, — Unbounded  Enquiry  ;  Unchal- 
lenged Eights  of  Conscience  ;  Universal  Educa- 
tion (including  Knowledge  of  the  Bodily 
Frame)  ;  Universal  Extinction  of  the  Doctrine 
of  Fear  by  that  of  Love  ;  Universal  and  Rea- 
sonable Employment ;  Universal  Leisure. 

The  Ends, — Universal  Healthy  Enjoyment 


86  THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART. 

of  all  the  Faculties,  Bodily  and  Mental ;  Uni- 
versal Love  of  tlie  Beautiful ;  Universal  Bro- 
therhood ;  Universal  Hope  of  Immortality  ; 
Universal  Trust  in  the  Goodness  and  All-Re- 
conciling Futurities  of  Grod. 


PUNISHMENTS  AND   REWARDS 


ACCORDING    TO 


THE  NEGLECT  OR  PERFORMANCE  OF  DUTY. 


PUNISHMENTS. 

The  word  Punishment  literally  means  the  giving 
of  pain,  and  has  no  other  meaning.  The  im- 
plication of  a  sense  of  vengeance  has  been  im- 
posed on  it  by  a  bad  theology. 

Punishment  is  no  more  vindictively  intended 
by  our  Divine  Father,  than  he  vindictively 
intends  the  pain  which  the  hand  suffers  when 
we  strike  it  accidentally  against  a  wall.  Pain 
in  that  case,  and  so  in  every  other,  is  simply  the 
conseq[uence  of  disturbing  the  condition  proper 
to  us  :  and  it  thus  becomes  a  warning  to  our- 
selves, and  to  others,  how  we  cause  it  again. 

Punishment  then,  or  the  giving  of  pain, 
whether  physical  or  moral,  is,  in  the  religious 
sense  of  the  word,  the  requisite  and  admonitory, 


88  THE    RELIGION    OF   THE   HEART. 

bnt  not  vindictive  consequence  of  violations  of 
the  laws  of  G-od,  as  ascertained  by  knowledge 
and  by  our  hearts  ;  and  it  has  for  its  sole  end 
the  good  of  the  violator  and  his  fellow  creatures. 
If  he  takes  warning  from  it,  he  ceases  to  need 
it :  if  he  hardens  himself  against  it,  the  advan- 
tages of  sensibility  and  of  goodness  forsake  him 
till  he  is  wiser :  if  he  persists  in  giving  it 
occasion,  till  amendment  is  too  late  or  too 
difficult,  he  dies  of  it.  And  in  the  worst  of 
these  cases,  the  warning  is  good  for  others. 

It  will  have  been  seen,  however,  in  these 
consequences  of  ill  doing,  that  punishment,  in 
the  literal  sense  of  the  word,  that  is  to  say,  the 
giving  of  pain  strictly  so  called,  or  positive 
pain,  does  not  include  them  all ;  for  there  is 
also  the  negative  pain,  whether  physical  or 
moral,  consequent  upon  a  man's  hardening  him- 
self against  the  pain  positive  ;  and  this  nega- 
tive pain  may  be  increased  by  his  persistence  in 
thus  hardening  himself,  till  it  apparently  be- 
comes no  pain  or  punishment  at  all,  the  offen- 
der having  become  callous.  There  is  even  a 
penalty  of  the  negative  kind,  attendant  on  the 
neglect  of  our  physical  or  moral  duties,  apart 
from  actual  violation  of  them  ;  such  as  when 
mental  idleness,  by  self-indulgence,  and  by  heed- 
lessness to  admonition,  becomes  self-contented, 
and  never  even  thinks  of  what  knowledge  or 


THE   RELIGION  OF   THE   HEART.  89 

respectability  it  is  losing ;  or  when  physical 
idleness,  in  like  manner,  reposes  on  its  habit, 
and  is  content  to  lose  air  and  exercise,  attribu- 
ting the  disorders  that  assail  it  to  any  cause  but 
the  right  one,  and  losing  perhaps  at  last  the 
power  of  counteracting  them,  in  the  use  of  its 
limbs. 

Intellectual  and  moral  observers,  by  the  natu- 
ral tendency  to  activity  in  their  minds,  have 
found  in  these  negative  states  of  being  such  ex- 
cess of  wrong,  and  of  ungodliness  towards  the 
Author  of  Being,  that  they  have  taken  them  to 
be  the  worst  and  most  fatal  punishments  of  all ; 
and  as  observers  of  this  kind  are  in  general  men 
of  benevolence,  such  of  them  as  were  desirous 
of  reconciling  certain  texts  in  the  Bible  to  the 
human  heart,  considered  the  various  threaten- 
ings  of  death  which  accompanied  them,  and  by 
which  indeed  their  worst  punishments  are  some- 
times wholly  expressed,  as  implying  retributive 
deprivation  of  bodily  existence  in  this  world, 
and  the  ^'eternal  death"  of  the  soul,  or  total 
annihilation,  in  the  next.* 

From  a  principle  similar  to  this,  but  still 
more  accordant  with  value  for  life,  and  considera- 

*  See  an  interesting  little  book,  entitled  Human  Nature: 
A  Philosophical  Exposition  of  the  Divine  Institution  of  Reward 
and  Punishment  which  obtains  in  the  Physical,  Intellectual,  and. 
Moral  Constitutions  of  Man,  if«r.     1844. 


90  THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART. 

tion  for  offenders,  arose  the  ancient  doctrine  of 
the  Metempsychosis  ;  in  which,  as  boys  do  in 
their  classes  at  school,  the  souls  of  those  who 
had  acted  unworthily  in  their  human  condition 
went  "lower  down,"  and  inhabited  the  bodies 
of  such  animals  as  were  supposed  to  be  addicted 
to  their  vices  ;  till,  by  rej)eated  sufferings,  and, 
if  necessary,  still  further  changes,  they  expiated 
their  misconduct,  and  so  worked  their  way  back 
into  humanity. 

The  holders  of  both  these  doctrines  equally 
saw  the  folly  and  monstrosity  of  that  which 
threatened  positive  punishment  without  end. — 
Such  punishment,  in  their  opinion,  (and  it  is 
the  same  with  all  humane  and  reflecting  persous 
who  have  the  courage  to  look  the  ghosts  of  su- 
perstition in  the  face,)  was  as  absurd  a  notion 
as  that  of  an  endless  dose  of  medicine,  an  end- 
less surgical  operation,  or  an  endless  whipping 
in  a  jail.  What,  say  they,  would  be  the  good 
of  it  to  the  sufferer  ?  and  what  sort  of  being 
should  we  think  the  judge  who  ordered  the  whip- 
ping ? 

God  will  not  allow  that  any  of  his  creatures 
should  either  suffer,  or  offend,  without  ceasing  : 
for  incessant  offence  would  only  perpetuate  that 
necessity  for  suffering  which  it  is  the  object  of 
punishment  to  prevent,  and  which  would  thus 
be  rendered  an  absurdity  ;  and  incessant  suffer- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART.       91 

ing  would  go  counter  to  the  object  for  which  he 
created  us,  and  which  would  thus  become,  if 
possible,  an  absurdity  still  greater. 

To  enumerate,  then,  the  punishments  or  ad- 
monitions for  non-attention  to  the  duties  men- 
tioned in  this  book. 

1.  The  punishment  of  not  cultivating  a  reve- 
rence for  God,  or  the  Divine  Mind  which  has 
ordained  the  universe,  is  the  want  of  a  sense  of 
intercourse  with  him,  on  the  part  of  our  best 
faculties, — of  our  minds  and  affections  as  distin- 
guished from  sensuous  perception,  and  from 
what  alone  concern  it.  It  is  the  want  of  the 
happiness  of  believing  that  we  have  a  divine 
resource  in  affliction  ;  a  divine  accepter  of  our 
gratitude  in  joy  ;  an  exalter  and  purifier  of  our 
spirit,  in  moments  when  we  aspire  beyond  the 
body.  Wanting  reverence  for  a  Divine  Spirit 
in  the  universe,  we  tend  to  a  similar  want  for 
the  inner  spirit  of  whatever  is  great  and  beauti- 
ful, and  are  in  danger  of  receiving  pleasure  from 
nothing  but  what  is  sensual  and  external. 

2.  The  punishment  of  not  cultivating  a  sense 
of  the  beautiful  in  Nature  and  Art,  is  a  lower- 
ing of  ourselves  to  the  gratifications  of  appetite, 
a  confinement  to  the  jail  of  common-pl^ce,  and 
a  sense  of  uneasiness  and  mortification  when 
pleasures   are   mentioned   that   we    have    left 


92  THE   RELIGION   OF   THE    HEART. 

unstudied,  and  that  would  enrich  those  which 
we  possess. 

3.  The  punishment  of  not  considering  duty 
our  first  object,  is  that  pleasure  itself  escapes 
us  :  for  we  do  not  consider  properly  what  can 
alone  secure  it. 

4.  The  punishment  of  delay  is  accumulation 
of  trouble  ;  a  mortifying  sense  of  weakness  ;  a 
constant  tendency  to  increase  that  weakness  ; 
loss  of  opportunity ;  diminution  of  means  ;  great 
inconvenience  to  others,  probably  serious  dis- 
tress ;  and  ultimately  great  regret  on  our  own 
parts,  possibly  remorse. 

5.  The  j)unishment  of  uncleanliness  of  person 
is  proportionate  want  of  health,  unseemliness 
of  appearance,  and  not  improbably,  disgust  to 
the  senses  of  others. 

6.  The  ]3unishment  of  inattention  to  air  and 
exercise  is  proportionate  want  of  health,  loss  of 
diversity  and  amusement,  and  impaired  energy 
for  the  work  which  is  too  often  made  its  excuse. 
Not  to  breathe  the  air  out  of  doors,  is  to  darken 
and  sadden  the  blood.  Not  to  give  exercise  to 
the  body,  is  to  weaken  the  muscles,  which  are 
the  instruments  of  the  will,  and  so,  by  degrees, 
the  will  itself-  Furthermore,  all  the  injuries 
which  human  beings  do  to  themselves,  are 
hazarded  to  the  children  that  are  born  of 
them. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART.      93 

7.  The  punishment  of  exciting  and  oppressing 
ourselves  with  over-eating  and  drinking,  and  of 
drowsing  ourselves  with  narcotics,  is  the  same 
as  those  of  uncleanliness,  with  loss  (if  persevered 
in)  of  the  power  of  the  will.  Physical  intem- 
perance increases  the  action  of  the  muscles  that 
perform  our  involuntary  actions,  or  the  bidding 
of  our  physical  organization,  to  the  detriment 
of  those  that  perform  our  voluntary  actions,  or 
the  bidding  of  our  will ;  till  at  length,  in  extreme 
cases,  the  will  itself  is  lost.  Drunkards  drink 
till  they  die.  Indulgers  in  narcotics,  gradually 
losing  the  power  to  give  them  up,  have  been 
known  to  be  unable  (literally)  to  will  themselves 
out  of  their  chairs,  or  to  quit  a  corner  of  the  room 
in  which  they  were  standing.  The  physical 
horrors  that  await  long  indulgences  of  intem- 
perance are  not  to  be  described.  They  tax  the 
endurance  of  love  to  the  utmost  ;  while  the 
persons  who  so  tax  it,  have  done  perhaps  little 
or  nothing  to  merit  the  endurance.  The 
coarsest  indiiference  of  the  hireling,  or  the  most 
angelical  patience  and  charity,  can  alone  support 
it.  Good  qualities  render  infirmities  piteous, 
and  worthy  of  all  tenderness  :  bad  qualities 
reduce  tiiem  to  their  last  degradation,  and 
render  them  loathsome.  0  you  who  have  any 
goodness  and  lovingness  remaining,  any  delicacy 
and  reflection,  think  while  it  is  yet  time  ! — 


94  THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART. 

Think,  and  begin  your  first  step  to  reform  in- 
stantly. You  know  not  what  you  may  come 
to  ;  what  disgusts,  including  your  own,  may 
humiliate  those  among  you,  whose  pride  or 
vanity  never  dream  of  such  possibilities.  And 
in  the  background  may  stand  a  worse  threaten- 
er,  completing  the  horror  with  all  other  horrors, 
— madness. 

8.  The  punishment  of  unkind  manners  is 
dislike  from  others  ;  resentment ;  the  substitu- 
tion of  a  narrow-minded,  uneasy  pleasure  for 
better  ones  ;  and  the  reputation  of  being  ill- 
bred  and  conceited,  perhaps  brutal  and  a  fooL 
Pettishness,  arrogance,  exaction,  the  love  of 
fault-finding,  angers  for  little  or  no  reason, 
galling  insinuations,  the  habit  of  what  is  called 
talking  ''at  people,"  these  and  all  other  forms 
of  unkindness  cause  hate,  alienation,  not  unfre- 
quently  vengeance.  The  most  disgusting  per- 
jhaps  of  them  all  is  a  habit  of  sarcasm,  indulged 
at  the  expense  of  dependents  and  others,  who 
are  expected  not  to  retaliate.  By  little  and 
little,  they  all  constitute  afflictions  and  calami- 
ties, and  render  whole  lives  unhappy.  They 
deface  good  looks  ;  they  put  the  last  ugliness 
upon  bad  looks  ;  they__  Jire  out  affections,  re- 
spects, endurances  ;  and  the  foolish  vain  people 
who  think  to  dictate  for  life  by  means  of  them, 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART.      95 

often  lose  all  power,  and  are  willingly  left  even 
to  themselves,  to  die. 

9.  The  punishment  of  a  censorious  habit  of 
conversation  is  censure  from  everybody,  not  ex- 
cepting those  who  join  in  it ;  the  loss  of  all  bet- 
ter topics  of  discourse,  beautiful  and  ennobling ; 
and  the  danger  of  ceasing  even  to  like  the  good 
qualities,  the  want  of  which  we  pretend  to  be 
shocked  at,  but  which  furnish  no  food  for  our 
unhappy  propensity.  Avowed  satire,  with  good 
intentions,  is  one  thing,  and  under  particular 
circumstances  may  be  .  a  noble  thing  ;  though 
the  best-intentioned  satirist  might  be  startled 
to  think  of  these  perils  of  the  satirical  habit : 
indeed  would  be  the  person  most  startled,  and 
would  hasten  to  show  how  he  repudiated  them. 
But  backbiting  who  can  avow  ?  and  how  is  it 
not  hated  ? 

10.  The  punishment  of  violations  of  truth  and 
confidence,  from  the  blackest  treachery  down  to 
the  commonest  habits  of  falsehood,  is  propor- 
tionate resentment,  alienation,  infamy.  The 
traitor  to  the  affections,  the  seducer  for  instance, 
is  a  cruel  fool,  whatever  powers  of  persuasion 
he  may  possess  ;  for  he  has  been  undermining 
his  own  happiness  as  well  as  that  of  others,  has 
injured  his  power  of  discerning  what  is  best  (if 
he  ever  had  it),  and  must  needs  try  to  believe 
others  as  bad  as  himself,  in  self-defence.     A 


96  THE    RELIGION    OF    THE   HEART. 

sorry  world  of  his  own  lie  will  make  of  it,  by  the 
time  he  is  a  little  older  and  more  cynical ! — 
The  dishonest  accountant  also  pays,  for  what 
he  has  acquired,  the  penalty  of  a  bad  conscience, 
if  he  has  any  conscience,  and  of  insensibility  to 
real  happiness,  if  he  has  no  conscience.  The 
common  habitual  liar  is  mulcted  in  disbelief 
from  others  ;  in  the  secret  disgust  (producing 
resentment)  of  those  with  whom  he  converses  ; 
in  a  character  for  silliness,  for  conceit,  or  for 
dishonesty  (from  each  of  which  it  often  arises, 
and  often  from  all  three  combined),  and  if  per- 
severed in  for  any  length  of  time,  in  loss  of  re- 
sources (if  poor),  loss  of  friends  under  any  cir- 
cumstances, perhaps  in  crime,  perhaps  in  the 
exchance  of  a  self-importance  which  was  always 
secretly  laughed  at,  for  a  consciousness  of  being- 
foolish  and  despised.  0  simpleton  !  begin  this 
instant  with  picking  your  way  back  into  truth 
and  wisdom. 

11.  The  punishment  of  ordinary  self-seeking, 
and  of  a  slavish  dread  of  misconstruction,  is 
that  we  narrow  our  faculties,  and  enlarge  our 
fears. 

12.  The  punishment  of  indifference  to  mis- 
construction is  that  we  offend  social  feeling  and 
revolt  good  will. 

13.  The  punishment  of  giving  pain  for  the 
sake  of  producing  a  pleasure,  is  that  we  render 


THE   KELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  97 

ourselves  insensible  to  many  pleasures,  and  un- 
deserving (so  to  speak)  of  sympathy  when  we 
suffer.  No  man  deserves  his  sufferings  more 
than  a  wounded  "  sportsman  ;"  nor  is  there  a 
less  respectable  sight  than  such  a  man  wailing. 
Newspapers  that  call  his  wounds  "shocking 
accidents/'  seem  to  talk  ironically.  Friends 
who  lament  them,  forget  the  torments  which 
the  sufferer  has  inflicted  on  bird  and  beast. — 
Men  who  have  an  indisputable  right  to  the 
handling  of  gun  and  sword ;  heroes,  for  instance, 
such  as  the  Arctic  voyagers,  who  encounter 
perils  worth  talking  of,  and  who  encounter  them 
in  the  cause  of  civilization,  regret  the  bears  and 
their  cubs  whom  necessity  may  have  forced 
them  to  kill ;  and  they  would  disdain  to  have 
more  said  of  their  own  sufferings  than  is  just : 
but  the  sportsman  records  his  slaughters  with 
triumph,  and  then  consents  to  have  his  hand 
wailed  over,  if  it  chance  to  meet  with  a  taste  of 
what  it  inflicts.  His  plea  is,  that  the  inhuman- 
ity is  good  for  his  health,  and  that  he  should 
want  a  motive  for  taking  air  and  exercise  with- 
out it.  But  in  what  respects  is  his  health  bet- 
ter worth  considering  than  the  lives  and  happi- 
ness of  the  creatures  whom  he  torments  ?  and 
why  must  they  suffer,  in  order  that  his  indiffer- 
ence to  the  attractions  of  out  of  door  nature 
should  be  supplied  with  a  motive  ? 


98  THE    RELIGION   OF    THE   HEART. 

14.  The  punishment  of  shrinking  from  pains 
which  ought  to  be  met  for  the  good  of  ourselves 
or  others,  is  the  increase  of  all  the  pains  that 
arise  from  effeminacy,  whatever  be  our  disposi- 
tion ;  and  regret,  perhaps  remorse,  if  our  dispo- 
sition be  good. 

15.  The  punishment  of  not  visiting  the  sick, 
and  others  who  need  comfort,  is  the  same  as 
that  which  has  just  been  mentioned,  and  proba- 
bly want  of  comfort  when  we  ourselves  need  it. 

16.  The  punishment  of  imposing  limits  on 
inquiry,  is  that  we  bring  doubt  on  the  tenability 
of  our  own  opinions,  deserve  imputations  against 
our  honesty  in  maintaining  them,  and  provoke 
a  bursting  of  the  limits  by  violence,  with  ex- 
cesses of  retribution. 

17.  The  punishment  of  refusing  to  consider 
any  one  single  exercise  or  enjoyment  of  all  the 
faculties  given  by  Grod  to  his  human  creatures, 
as  a  right  belonging  to  every  human  creature, 
demonstrable  by  the  possession  of  those  facul- 
ties, is  the  denial  and  stultification  of  the  right 
in  ourselves,  and  the  most  deplorable  reaction 
of  the  wrong  upon  our  social  relations. 

18.  The  punishment  of  not  cherishing  God's 
gift  of  the  hope  of  immortality,  is  that  of  in- 
gratitude to  the  Giver,  and  of  a  sullen  shutting 
of  the  eyes  to  a  divine  prospect ;  the  loss  of  a 


THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART.  99 

pleasure  in  possession,  and  of  unbounded  plea- 
sures in  the  contemplation. 

19.  The  punishment  of  a  refusal  to  bear  in 
mind  that  morals  are  habits,  and  that  good  as 
well  as  bad  habits  are  acquirable,  is  that  we 
lose  the  fear  of  a  bad  habit,  and  the  encourage- 
ment to  begin  a  good  one. 

20.  The  punishment  of  refusing  to  bear  in 
mind  that  the  habits  of  children  commence  with 
their  existence,  is  that  we  increase  every  day  the 
difficulty  of  laying  the  foundations  for  good 
ones,  and  that  we  suffer  the  consequences  mean- 
while, perhaps  all  our  lives.  As  to  the  punish- 
ment after  death,  little  can  be  imagined  of  it  in 
a  book  like  this,  because  the  Heart  revolts  from 
the  addition  of  penalties  to  those  already  men- 
tioned, and  because  it  cannot  but  think  that  the 
souls  of  those  who  should  be  unable  to  enter 
worthily  on  a  higher  state  of  existence,  would 
have  new  chances  given  them,  or  rather  new 
revolutions  into  existence,  so  as,  of  necessity,  to 
bring  all  inequalities  of  birth,  breeding,  and 
circumstance,  right  at  last.  The  only  objections 
to  the  ordinary  idea  of  a  metempsychosis  are, 
first,  the  danger  of  its  subjecting  inferior  animals 
to  ill  treatment  from  unfeeling  persons,  or  to  an 
injurious  over-consideration  from  the  sensitive  ; 
and  second,  the  question,  why  any  one  human 
being  should  be  created  liable  to  the  necessity 


100     THE  EELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

of  the  revolution^  more  than  another.  The 
Heart  can  rest  satisfied  with  no  conclusion  that 
involves  an  appearance  of  injustice.  It  must 
always  prefer  a  benevolent  ignorance  to  an 
inhuman  assumption. 


REWARDS. 

Kewardj  or  the  necessary  consequence  of  the 
performance  of  duties  enjoined  us  by  the  laws 
of  Grod,  as  ascertained  by  knowledge  and  by  our 
hearts^  has  for  its  sole  end  the  happiness  of  the 
receiver.  It  consists  of  good,  healthy,  and 
happy  life  ;  or  of  so  much  of  it,  as  the  amount 
of  performed  duty  obtains  ;  and  it  is  that  natu- 
ral and  final  condition  of  humanity,  for  the  en- 
joyment of  which  our  bodies  and  our  minds  are 
constituted,  if  we  do  but  observe  the  laws  of 
their  welfare. 

1.  The  reward  of  reverence  for  God,  or  a  Di- 
vine Mind  governing  the  universe,  is  a  sense  of 
recognition,  and  (so  to  speak)  sympathy  from 
the  Great  Author  of  sympathy  ;  something, 
however  limited,  of  personal  and  spiritual  inter- 
course with  the  Great  and  Good  Spirit  who  has 
put  the  thought  into  our  hearts  ;  something  of 
a  privilege  of  retreating  within  a  sense  of  him 
during  affliction,  and  of  being  regarded  by  his 
fatherly  complacency  during  joy  and  gratitude  ; 


THE    KELIGION    OF    THE    HEArTT.  lOl 

in  a  word,  a  humanization  (as  it  were)  of  God, 
so  far  as  lie  is  the  author  and  includer  of  hu- 
manity, yet  at  the  same  time  no  degradation  of 
him  from  the  universality  which  so  includes  it, 
or  from  the  power  by  which  he  made  all  other 
beings  and  their  worlds,  with  their  endless  and 
inconceivable  diversities.  It  is  heaven  stooping 
to  us,  because  it  can  stoop  as  well  as  it  can  do 
all  other  things,  and  because  the  heart  which  it 
has  made,  has  been  made  to  need  the  stooping. 

2.  The  reward  of  the  cultivation  of  the  Beau- 
tiful is  the  enrichment  of  the  sight  wherever  it 
turns  (for  there  is  some  beauty  of  proportion,  or 
of  relation  or  of  light  and  shade,  everywhere), 
and  the  enrichment  of  the  soul  by  the  relation 
of  the  visible  to  the  invisible,  or  form  to  senti- 
ment ;  its  endless  analogies,  and  divine  exalta- 
tions. 

3.  The  reward  of  considering  duty  our  first 
object  is  self-respect,  respect  from  others,  and  a 
constant  sense  of  triumph  (however  modestly  it 
becomes  us  to  think  of  it),  of  strength,  and  of 
good  intention.  For  the  performance  of  duty 
is  triumph  in  itself,  whatever  be  its  success 
otherwise.  Self-denial,  the  essence  of  virtue,  is 
the  first  principle  of  duty ;  and  self-denial, 
when  it  is  the  sacrifice  of  inclination  to  reflec- 
tion, of  the  will  to  the  reason,  of  selfishness  to 
unselfishness,  is,  though  the  bitterest  of  cups  at 


102  THE'^EiiGION    OF    THE   HEART. 

top,  the  sweetest  at  bottom.  By  degrees  the 
bitters  are  overcome  ;  the  taste  of  sweets  alone 
remains  ;  duty,  from  self-denial,  becomes  self- 
enjoyment  ;  in  prosperity,  a  delight ;  in  adver- 
sity, a  sustainment  and  a  balm. 

4.  The  reward  of  never  delaying,  is  to  be  the 
lord  of  time,  the  doubler  of  obligation,  the  re- 
ceiver of  perpetual  thanks.  It  is  business  in 
advance,  leisure  unrebuked,  kindness  not  to  be 
doubted.  To  meet  even  the  smallest  requests 
instantly,  and  to  grant  them  for  the  pleasure 
of  granting,  though  they  take  no  more  trouble 
than  the  getting  up  from  a  chair  or  the  looking 
for  a  straw,  is,  in  no  long  course  of  time,  to  give 
and  to  receive  harvests  of  good  will.  It  shows  a 
willingness  to  gratify  ;  a  spirit  of  obligingness  ; 
and  obligingness,  spread  over  the  little  mo- 
ments of  which  the  chief  part  of  life  is  made 
up,  constitutes  a  mass  of  benefit,  which  it  sel- 
dom falls  to  the  lot  of  greater  opportunities  to 
equal.  Nor  are  those  who  are  in  the  habit  of 
doing  such  small  favors,  by  any  means  the  least 
likely  persons  to  be  capable  of  conferring  the 
noblest ;  for  we  are  speaking  of  a  real  and  dis- 
interested, not  a  designing  wish  to  please  ;  and 
it  is  observable,  that  the  best  and  greatest  men 
are  apt  to  be  the  most  good-natured  in  inter- 
course. They  are  too  superior  to  petty  feelings 
to  be  otherwise. 


THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    HEART.  103 

These  remarks  might  have  been  added  to 
those  on  kind  manners  ;  but  the  immediate 
subject  suggested  them  ;  and  all  duties  are  more 
or  less  connected. 

5.  The  reward  of  cleanliness  of  person  is  pro- 
portionate health,  self-respect,  cheerfulness,  and 
the  giving  of  i)leasure  to  others. 

6.  The  reward  of  attention  to  air  and  exercise 
is  proportionate  health,  self-respect,  cheerfulness, 
and  the  enjoyment  of  the  external  world. 

7.  The  reward  of  not  exciting  or  oppressing 
ourselves  with  over-eating  and  drinking,  and 
of  not  drowsing  ourselves  with  narcotics,  is 
proportionate  self-respect,  activity,  bodily  and 
mental,  and  command  over  the  Avill.  Free- 
dom from  intemperance  of  any  kind  is  so  much 
power  gained  to  think,  to  do,  and  to  ab- 
stain. The  intemperate  man  is  merry  at  times, 
and  the  habitual  smoker  and  opium-taker  is 
soothed  at  times  ;  but  the  temperate  man  is 
cheerful  always,  or  can  best  support  Avant  of 
cheerfulness.  He  need  never  be  running  after 
the  time  he  has  lost ;  nor  lamenting  the  bad 
spirits,  the  repentances,  or  the  fits  of  anger  and 
sullenness,  into  which  intemperance  betrays 

8.  The  reward  of  kind  manners  (supposing 
them  to  be  really  kind,  and  not  pretended)  is 
kindness  in  return,  harmony  around  us,  and 
pleasure  in  the  recollection  of  us.     All  human 


104     THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

beings  love  power  more  or  less,  be  it  only  for 
the  sake  of  obtaining  as  strong  a  sense  as  possi- 
ble of  their  individualit}^ ; — of  the  worth  and 
amount  of  their  actual  existence.  But  it  is 
acquired  in  different  ways,  in  different  quanti- 
ties, and  of  different  qualities.  They  who 
exact  it  least  (unless  they  fall  among  very 
unworthy  persons)  acquire  it  most,  and  (if 
unexacting  from  the  best  motives)  of  the  best 
sort.  Should  their  goodness  and  understandings 
be  on  a  par,  power  indeed  is  fairly  shovelled 
into  their  hands  ;  and  as  they  use  it  only  for  the 
happiness  of  those  around  them,  their  own 
happiness  is  of  a  kind  the  most  rewarding. 

9.  The  reward  of  freedom  from  censoriousness 
in  conversation,  from  speaking  evil  of  the  absent, 
and  from  the  habit  of  fault-finding  with  those 
who  are  present,  is  a  portion  of  that  which  has 
just  been  described  ;  but  as  it  is  advisable  to 
make  special  mention  of  it,  particularly  as  re- 
gards the  absent,  it  may  be  said  to  consist  in 
the  consciousness  of  not  deserving  to  be  ill- 
spoken  of  in  our  own  absence,  of  not  seeking  to 
rise  by  pulling  others  down,  of  being  thought 
of  with  pleasure  by  all  our  acquaintances  (the 
censorious,  unless  at  times,  not  excepted),  and 
of  exciting  the  gratitude  of  all  with  whom  we 
converse  by  showing  them  how  safe  they  will 
leave  their  own  characters  in  our  hands,  and 


THE  KELIGION  OF  THE  HEART.     105 

how  little  we  tliouglit  them  under  the  necessity 
of  being  unworthily  entertained.  To  come  away 
from  a  conversatioUj  in  which  there  has  been  no 
censure  of  others,  yet  no  lack  of  zest,  is  to  carry 
with  our  memories  a  golden  clue. 

10.  The  reward  of  being  true  in  word  and 
deed  (supposing  it  to  be  truth  of  the  true  sort, 
that  is  to  say,  kindly  truth,  truth  true  to  the 
objects  of  all  virtue,  and  not  unfeeling  or  ma- 
levolent truth,  truth  that  can  be  of  no  service, 
or  can  only  give  pain)  is  proportionate  esteem, 
veneration,  love,  power  ;  all  the  good  will  that 
others  can  feel  for  us,  and  all  the  positive  good 
they  can  do  us.  Nine-tenths  of  the  alleged  in- 
humanity of  mankind  is  owing  to  their  ])eing 
deceived.  If  people  are  sure  of  an  accident  or 
a  calamity,  crowds  hasten  to  relieve  it.  By  ve- 
racity we  cliarm  in  conversation  ;  by  sincerity 
we  influence  opinion  ;  by  trustworthiness  we 
render  friends  loving  and  secure  ;  add  to  the 
general  confidence  of  men  in  men,  and  by  thus 
strengthening  the  foundations  of  society,  acquire 
the  right  to  an  analogous  personal  sense  of  worth 
and  firmness.  Truth  gives  a  sense  of  security 
to  the  feeblest  man,  as  lying  does  of  insecurity 
to  the  strongest.  The  true  man  has  but  one 
answer  to  give  to  interrogators,  one  story  to  tell 
them,  one  face  to  shew  them,  nobody's  face  to 
fear. 


106  THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   HEART. 

11.  The  reward  of  magnanimity,  and  of  being 
able  to  hazard  misconstruction  for  the  sake  of  a 
principle,  is  the  knowledge  of  lis  by  those  who 
resemble  us,  and  the  chance  of  being  able  to  do 
the  greatest  good. 

12.  The  reward  of  not  being  indifferent  to 
misconstruction,  is  gratitude  from  that  reason- 
able portion  of  self-love  in  the  community  which 
is  founded  on  the  instincts  of  love  social,  and  on 
the  importance  of  fellow-creatures  to  one  ano- 
ther. 

13.  The  reward  of  abstaining  from  pleasures 
that  are  founded  on  giving  j)ain,  has  been  inti- 
mated, as  respects  the  moral  portion  of  it,  in  the 
remarks  upon  kind  manners.  The  reward  of 
abstaining  from  pleasures  connected  with  the 
giving  of  physical  pain,  is  the  consciousness  of 
being  able  to  do  without  them,  of  not  taking 
unwarrantal)le  advantages  of  creatures  inferior 
to  us,  of  saving  unnecessary  suffering,  and  of 
doing  as  we  would  be  done  by  at  the  hands  of 
beings  superior  to  ourselves.  A  lover  of  nature, 
who  can  get  health  from  the  fields  without  agony 
to  stag  or  pheasant,  and  who,  besides  health, 
can  get  instruction  and  delight  from  studying 
the  creation  around  him,  is  as  mucli  superior  to 
the  sportsman  who  can  do  nothing  of  this,  as  the 
sportsman  is  superior  (if  he  is)  to  a  beast  of 
pi-ey. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART.     107 

14  and  15.  The  reward  of  undergoing  pain 
and  danger  for  duty's  sake,  particularly  duty  to 
others,  is  proportionate  self-respect,  respect  and 
love  from  others,  and  the  godlike  joy  of  bringing 
best  out  of  worst,  and  good  from  evil.  To  bear, 
with  perfect  good  temper,  even  a  head-ache  or  a 
tooth-ache,  is  something  ;  to  have  been  a  good 
servant  at  the  bed  of  sickness,  is  a  thing  we 
may  remember  with  some  comfort  in  sorrow  ;  to 
have  spared  ourselves  no  additional  anguish  in 
sustaining  the  dying,  is  more,  far  more  ;  to  en- 
counter long  and  great  perils  in  peaceful  enter- 
prises for  the  sake  of  mankind,  such  as  those  of 
the  Arctic  voyagers,  is  heroical  ;  to  go  to  the 
stake  for  a  principle,  or  be  left  of  loving  friends, 
or  get  ill  repute  from  the  fellow-creatures  whom 
it  would  benefit,  is  martyrdom  ;  and  yet  the 
greatest  of  these  trials  have  rewards  in  the  very 
penalties,  the  suffering  being  noble,  and  the  soul 
by  it  purified  and  exalted.  The  saying,  that 
"virtue  is  its  own  reward,"  may  be  accepted  by 
sincere  men,  mthout  help  from  the  satirist. — 
Virtue  is  its  own  reward  ;  often  a  great  one, 
always  one  that  is  worth  having.  What  does 
it  not  bestow,  in  the  consciousness  of  strength 
and  truth  ?  What  has  it  not  saved  from,  in 
the  wisdom  of  self-denial  ?  What  would  not 
any  right-minded  man  give  to  have  exercised  it, 
when  temptation  proved  too  strong  for  him  ? 


108     THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

when  one  failure  may  liave  blighted  even  many 
successes,  and  put  remorse  into  a  sensitive 
mind  ? 

Virtue,  however,  is  not  the  only  reward  of 
virtue.  All  who  are  acquainted  with  it,  love 
it.  They  all  rejoice  in  its  joy,  and  suffer  with 
its  distress. 

Provided  it  has  been  charitable. 

Provided  that  the  worth  of  it,  as  virtue,  which 
is  strength,  has  been  completed  by  charity,  which 
is  goodness. 

16.  The  reward  of  encouraging  unbounded 
inquiry,  is  the  consciousness  of  our  willingness 
to  discover  the  truth,  though  at  ex])ense  to  our 
previous  oj^inions  ;  of  deserving  therefure  the 
respect  of  all  honest  men  ;  and  of  losing  no 
chance  for  increasing  the  welfare  of  mankind. — 
Wliat  matters  it  to  the  lover  of  truth,  whether 
his  own  opinions  prove  true  or  not,  j^rovided  he 
gets  truer  oj^inions  .^  What  he  desires  is,  not 
to  be  tliought  wise.  Init  to  be  so  ;  not  to  be 
considered  a  traveler  on  a  right  road,  (for,  should 
he  be  on  the  wrong  one,  how  ridiculous  would 
be  that  !)  but  to  be  actually  traveling  the  right 
road  ;  bound,  in  sober  sincerity,  for  that  home 
of  truth  which  he  has  been  seeking ;  and  not 
bent  on  the  fantastical  reiDutation  of  being  sup- 
posed to  seek  it. 

17.  The  reward  of  recognizing  the  right  of 


THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    HEART.  109 

every  fellow-creature,  of  whatsoever  creed,  color, 
or  condition,  to  the  exercise  and  enjoyment  of 
every  faculty,  bodily  and  mental,  bestowed  by 
the  Creator,  is  gratitude  from  obtainers  of  the 
right  recognized,  and  advancement  of  its  recog- 
nition by  the  species.  Enslavement  of  the  negro 
is  an  impudent  substitution  of  selfish  force  for 
social  beneficence.  Condemnations  to  celibacy 
and  prostitution  are  alike  the  results  of  cruel 
mistakes,  political  and  moral. 

18.  The  reward  of  encouraging  in  ourselves 
the  hope  of  immortality,  is  gratitude  to  the 
Giver,  contemplation  of  endless  progress  and 
acquirement,  patience  under  affliction,  joyful 
thoughts  of  meetings  in  futurity,  and,  conse- 
quently upon  those  thoughts,  a  wonderfully 
changed  aspect  in  death  itself ;  which  thus  be- 
comes a  joiner  of  what  it  has  separated,  and 
almost  a  wholly  different  thing  from  what  it  was 
before  friends  were  lost.  Thoughts  of  immor- 
tality are  reconcilers  of  disappointments,  com- 
pleters to  short-comings,  solvers  of  hard  riddles, 
fulfillers  of  expectations,  only  satisfiers  of  hearts. 
Is  it  possible  that  God  should  have  given  them 
to  us,  and  that  anybody  should  refuse  them  ? 

19.  The  reward  of  bearing  in  mind  that  mo- 
rals are  habits,  and  that  good  habits  are  acquir- 
able as  well  as  bad  ones,  is  that  a  man  may  be- 


110     THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEART. 

gin  the  reformation  of  a  bad  habit  instantly  and 
with  hope. 

20.  The  reward  of  bearing  in  mind  that  the 
habits  of  children  commence  with  their  exist- 
once,  is  the  saving  of  great  troubles  both  to  us 
and  to  themselves  ;  their  love  and  gratitude  as 
tho}^  grow  up,  if  they  turn  out  worthy  ;  and 
the  comfort  of  a  good  conscience  in  sorrow,  if 
they  do  not. 

A  wise  mother  provides  for  the  well-being 
of  her  child  before  it  is  born,  by  good  habits  of 
her  own  :  a  wise  father  assists  the  foresight,  and 
loves  her  for  it :  she  loves  him  for  an  aifection 
?o  discerning,  and  so  honorable  to  both  their 
hearts  :  and  what  rewards  are  not  these  ? 


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